Parentheses: AntiFluff Drabbles
by Karkadinn
Summary: An exploration of the distinct lack of romance between two cousins, and the resulting psychological fallout. Sometimes secrets are the only things we have left to define ourselves with.
1. Chapter 1

Parentheses: Anti-Fluff Drabbles

1. Innocent Until Proven Guilty

Though she didn't often think of it herself, and never, ever allowed herself to seriously dwell on it (except late at night, when she was trying to get to sleep, and she couldn't _help_ it then), Gwen knew how he felt about her. She was 99.99 percent sure that Grampa didn't know, and there was no way on earth anyone else could know, so that meant it was just her and Ben, their secret, their secret that didn't exist because neither of them would admit it existed except in their heads, where no one else could hear or suspect.

It had started on the second summer vacation, when what could have been just a one time road trip started to turn into a serious routine, with all indications of going on every summer, like clockwork. And why not? The adventures were fun. Ben could always use a Plumber and a magically-gifted cousin to back him up. They all enjoyed each other's company, even if she and Ben fought with the kind of untiring relentlessness that only came with being around a hated enemy or a best friend. It had started then. Or maybe that's just when she'd started noticing it? Or maybe it had actually started later, and only her paranoia had fueled the imagined tidbits between the lines, the tiny meanings in parentheses between the fights and the quips and the insults that no one else would have caught. But regardless of when it had started, it was definitely here now, no mistaking it. And by all appearances, it was here to stay.

It was the way he looked at her, sometimes, in times of stress and emotion, usually involving monsters and mortal peril, but sometimes in rare moments of empathy. And it was also when he very deliberately _didn't_ look at her, tried too hard to _not_ look. It was in their rare-as-shooting-stars hugs, the way he would sometimes hug just a little too long, or cut the hug short very quickly, stumbling back with a slightly freaked out look and recovering himself with some muttering about how gross hugging people was. As they grew older, the more blatant, less subtle insults got fewer and fewer, but he always instinctively retreated to them whenever things got just a little, accidentally, weird. Antagonism was a safe haven for them, and she didn't begrudge him that quick and easy way of re-establishing normalcy whenever it became ever so slightly strained.

The very concept had freaked her out, of course, just the slightest _possibility_... it had made her sick to her stomach. Then, just to figure out how to deal with it, she rationalized. They hung out all the time, lived together in the summers, and Ben was a growing boy with little opportunity to socialize with the opposite gender. It was just like how people went gay in prison, just a lack of options, that was all! Totally understandable, if stupid and gross. He was a confused boy who would grow out of it and go on to be normal, as normal as a shapeshifting superhero could ever be, anyway. But he never seemed to grow out of it. And as they both grew comfortable in their shared, unspoken denial of something no one else could possibly suspect (except Grampa, and if _he_ suspected, he was an even better actor than they were, radiating obliviousness like Santa radiated cheer), she got somewhat relaxed about it. It was there, but nothing was going to happen. She came to think of it as an unpleasant piece of furniture that she couldn't get rid of. Couldn't figure out how to fit it through the doorway, or something. If nothing happened, it didn't _matter_, right? Just ignore it and everything's fine. Just ignore it. She ignored it, and ignored it, and ignored it until it became so much second nature that it didn't even require conscious thought. It became instinctive to the point that she almost thought she had dreamed up the whole thing, a figment of her perverse imagination... but then some little tiny, negligible coincidence would happen, and add up with other coincidences, and reassure her in ways she never wanted to be reassured.

As they grew up, more or less together, never quite abandoning each other though they'd sometimes go for long periods without talking, she tried to set him up on dates. Between the girls she pushed his way and the ones he chased after himself, he had a pretty full calendar on weekends. But they never seemed to work out. He always came back, grinning that big Cheshire grin and mumbling some excuse about the latest disaster, how one of his growing list of nemeses had crashed the date or how the chick had turned out to be a jerk or a nutcase or just not his type. Not that he would ever tell anyone what his type _was_. And maybe it was just those things, maybe, but deep inside Gwen wondered if maybe it wasn't something else. If maybe Ben just wasn't _letting_ himself get into a happy relationship with a girl, because he didn't really _want_ any of it. He always complained about his dates to her. Especially the ones she set him up on, _especially_ those. He had a few school friends he could have talked to about it, and there was always Grampa, or his parents, but no, he had to tell _her_ why each and every date had failed to measure up to his foggy specifications. And with each complaint about each girl, she seemed to hear, right afterwards, the line '_...but YOU'RE not like that, even if you are a dweeb/geek/nerd/freak/dork._'

She tried, a few times, to get someone herself, but the romances on her part never seemed to work out either. Not because she didn't want them to, she did, she _did_, but there was always something that happened. Fred cheated on her, Constance had accused her of being a witch after finding out about her occult interests, and Jonathan had been disturbingly determined to get a sex change operation. And even when she was with someone, it just made things harder. Ben wasn't stupid, he got the hint, he kept as far away as she could have ever wanted... but he kept away while trying, unsuccessfully, to hide a kicked puppy look from his face. And though she hated to admit it to herself, she hated even more to see him looking so sad, and hated, most of all, his attempts to hide it, good enough to fool everyone but her and Grampa. When dating failed, she dove into her books, constantly telling him that she was far too busy with school, with magic, with learning things so she could be somebody to bother with hanging out with her cousin. But she could only stand that look on his face for so long, all the more unbearable because he didn't want her to know it was there.

When her mastery over spells became reasonably proficient, she considered drastic measures. There were ways to reprogram the mind, using psychic influences. Using ephemeral, untraceable magical energies defter than any surgeon's knife. The reagents would have been expensive, but not out of her budget. It wouldn't have hurt him, or her. All it would have done was quietly slice away a part of him that neither of them wanted to begin with, so they could be normal, _really_ normal again, and not just faking it. Her thoughts still drifted to it sometimes, but ultimately she rejected it. It was wrong, to screw with someone's head like that. To change who they were without their permission. And God knows she wasn't courageous enough to _ask_ for permission! What if she'd been wrong, all these years? What would he think of her then? Who would be the pervert after _that_, huh?!

She wished it wasn't so, and he almost certainly wished the same, but there was nothing to be done about it. Nothing to do except live with it, and there wasn't an it so there was no problem, everything was perfectly normal, lalala! Most distracting and disturbing of all were the times of brief insanity, usually when she'd had one beer too many at a party, when she just wanted him to blurt it out and get it over with. As if that would have been some kind of release, to let them move on with their lives. Hah! What would _that_ do, except make them social outcasts for the rest of their lives, and make things between them utterly awkward? It wasn't as though there was anything to gain from it. God knows she didn't _return_ his feelings. Not even a little bit.

They grew up and grew older, and for all that watching eyes could tell, had perfectly normal lives, aside from the whole magic and alien superhero gigs. And if they spent just a little bit more time around each other than most cousins, and backed each other up in alien fights at the drop of a hat, well, there was nothing wrong with _that_, now was there? And if they had to go on dancing their little dance and wearing their little masks till time stopped, what of it? Everyone had secrets. Especially superheroes, it was practically required for superheroes! And this was one secret Gwen intended to take with her to the grave without it ever passing her lips to anyone, even to the one other person she shared it with.

Because, while she liked excitement and adventure and a little danger to spice up normal life, there were limits to how much abnormal she could tolerate. Because she could risk her life easier than she could withstand the disapproving stares of her family. Because fighting aliens was _way_ easier than enduring the whispers, real and imagined, of scornful strangers and acquaintances. Because tentacles squeezing the life out of her had nothing on the shocked, disturbed look she pictured a thousand times on Grampa's face. Because having a flesh-annihiliating laser an inch from her skull was much, _much_ less scary than the idea that Ben Tennyson, Ben Ten eventually Thousand, had less than appropriate feelings for his cousin. It was scary for her sake, and for his, and for everyone close to them, and she just couldn't deal with it, she _refused_ to deal with it.

And so life went on, and the adventures continued, and everything was normal. Except for, sometimes, the looks they shared, accidental, brief, but intense. There was nothing wrong with exchanging looks, was there? There wasn't anything wrong with that. Nothing weird about it.

The magic and the alien watch were the _only_ weird things about them, she always told new friends, in a dry, joking tone. There wasn't anything else to separate them from regular people.

There wasn't anything else at all.


	2. Chapter 2

2. Plumbing the Depths

A disturbing amount of Gwen's thought process regarding her grandfather was bound up in hypotheticals. The man was a mystery wrapped in enigma. No one could really be so jolly, so at ease, so totally cheerful but still in control as him, not with the crazed adventure that basically was his life. No one could be _that_ normal and live so abnormally, could they?

She wondered a lot about what he would say if she tried to put the questions into words. If he'd know what she was talking about, and pretend not to, or if he'd have an easy answer to satisfy everything, the way he always seemed to. There was pain, and violence, and risks, and stress, but it all seemed to flow over him, leaving him untouched, a smooth plain while the flowing lava hissed and splurted with ineffective anger. It wasn't that he didn't get mad, or that he didn't get serious, it was just that he never got more mad or more serious than was necessary for a situation. Even during his most totally grim moments, he never really broke down. Gwen sometimes cried or got the shakes or had to be alone for a little bit after a particularly hair-raising fight, and Ben basically superheroed with mental blinders on most of the time, ignoring everything except the fight in front of him, just to keep on grinning. But Grampa was different. Grampa's life was just as strange as theirs, maybe even stranger, but he was so well-adjusted that it scared her sometimes, made her wish that he was a little _less_ well-adjusted.

For that matter, there wasn't any way of telling how much of it was Grampa, and how much of it was Plumber. The organization, not so much shadowy as completely invisible until it wanted to show itself, had its claws sunk so deep into Grampa that it seemed to function like a skeleton for him, determining his basic form and function, the extent of his strength and flexibility. Gwen had never, in her years of loose association with the Plumbers, been given cause to think them anything less than beneficent. Quite the contrary, the Plumbers overall seemed just as friendly and 'normal' as Grampa himself. And that was the problem, wasn't it? How could the Plumbers possibly reconcile what they did with how they acted? Not just the actual work, but the curtain that kept the work separate from the 'real' world, as much as possible. The casual lying, the coverups, the secrets.

Above all else, the secrets.

All the time, secrets, secrets from everyone, because the world wasn't ready to know about aliens, or the technology was too dangerous in the wrong hands, or the magical spell was meant to remain buried, or whatever the latest excuse was. That was what she grew to think of them as. Excuses. They were always for the good of the people, but she wished the people could have the chance to decide for themselves. Even if they made the wrong decision.

Before she had grown old enough to really brood over the issues involved, she had started to relax around the concept, treat it with the same casual attitude that Grampa did. It was, for some reason, the unique and disturbing issue between her and Ben that ultimately changed her mind, if not her outward behavior. No one could watch her and tell a difference, but in time, she grew to despise even the word 'secret.' To despise it with a cold hatred, like it was an actual person that had done her wrong. Okay, fine, secret identities were matter of course for paranormal vigilantes, but why did there have to be other things? Little things, that just kept adding up and up, till life was like a great big cobweb so tangled it was impossible to make out the sun overhead anymore.

She told herself that she was overreacting, overthinking it, and maybe that was true to an extent, but true or not it didn't change the way she felt. She trusted Grampa, more than anyone else in the world, even more than Ben (but she was darn well never gonna tell either of _them_ that)... but she didn't _understand_ him.

The Plumbers plumbed. They went on their important missions, delved into the hidden places, uncovered treasures and put them back again. The Plumbers plumbed, but no one plumbed the Plumbers. They were good people, but they had no problems whatsoever with keeping things from the public for the public's own good. Grampa didn't even blink before rolling fibs off his tongue. Gwen knew, she'd deliberately watched to check. That was the big difference between Grampa and Ben. Ben was a loudmouth and a braggart, and it _killed_ him to have to keep his superhero identity and everything around it a secret, and his lies were always crude and last minute at best. He wouldn't have to do that forever, though... they had been to a future where everyone knew who Ben Tennyson was when he punched the Omnitrix, and Gwen was certain no one looked forward to that future more than Ben himself. She just wished Grampa could have drawn some kind of lesson or conclusion from it too. Things didn't have to be the way they were. Not that she was egotistical enough to say she knew exactly how they should be, but she knew they should be _different_, somehow!

Would Grampa even think it strange, the secret kept between her and Ben? Not the _actual_ secret, she was sure _that_ would have gotten a reaction out of him, but the fact that she and Ben could keep a secret, _any_ secret, so completely. It didn't seem healthy to her. It didn't seem natural. And yet, Grampa lived such an unnatural life so completely naturally. As far as she knew, anyway. If he kept secrets so well from others, who was to say he wasn't keeping some from her and Ben? There was no telling what he kept to himself, in the end. No telling at all.

She trusted him! She loved him! But still, she couldn't help but wonder, and hate herself for wondering.

There was always the possibility that everyone lived like that, of course. And that, she decided, was the possibility that scared her most of all. That everyone could have secrets that they lived with, totally seamlessly. No one really honest, no one really open. Everyone acted normal, but what if normal didn't exist? What if normal was just an act, a concept everyone pretended to be, an ideal that was never to be attained. And she didn't want that. She wanted normal to be real, even if she never had it. Something solid to clutch at with one hand while the other held on to the insanity that was the rest of life. She didn't know why she wanted it to be that way, but then, the older she got, the more she found out she didn't know about herself.

During some of their more intense adventures, she caught herself staring at Grampa and hoping, with an angry (_why_ she was angry was just _another_ thing she didn't know) intensity, that he would finally break down, and get really furious, or really upset. Lose control in _some_ way, act less like an action hero and more like the flabby old man that his body insisted he was. It never happened, of course. Ben broke down for him, though, every once in a while. And that was both better and worse. Sometimes she doubted Grampa even being human, but there was no mistaking Ben for anything but the distilled essence of flawed-but-still-trying-to-do-right-by-folks humanity. That should have made her happy, since she had been craving that sort of thing from Grampa for so long, but no. It just put a hollow feeling in her throat and stomach.

There wasn't a human being on the face of the earth who could claim to be closer to her than Grampa or Ben, but she tried not to think about either of them very hard. Thinking just made her tired. She lived for and through the adventures, for and through the 'normal' side of life, and she did her very best to not think about what it all meant.

For all she knew, it didn't mean anything.


	3. Chapter 3

3. Hero

The older they both got, the more she said it.

"What kind of hero leaves his dirty underwear on MY BED?! You could have left them on _your_ bed, or gee whiz, actually put them in the hamper, but that just wasn't _gross_ enough for you, was it?!"

"How many heroes do _you_ know who use their superpowers to cheat at Uno, Ben? Because right now the only one I can think of is you. And it's not even like it's a _real_ card game, like poker or anything! It's Uno! Why are you even bothering to cheat?!"

"Any hero with a _brain_ would be happy to have help in a tough fight. So I guess that leaves _you_ out, huh?"

"So what if no one else knows you're a hero? So you can't flaunt Fourarms's muscles to get dates, life goes on."

"Y'know, a _gentlemanly_ hero would let the _lady_ have the first shower of the... oh, jeez, nevermind, you need it _way_ worse than me."

"I'm pretty sure Stinkfly is the worst superhero name ever."

"Just... no spandex, okay? That's one superhero cliché you can just walk away from."

"I have difficulty imagining a hero dumber than you."

"Oh, stop whining, it's not proper behavior for a hero."

"Can't you just be a good little superhero and walk away from it without abusing your powers for personal gain?"

"Sure, be a selfish hero and use XLR8 to chase after girls instead of crooks, see if I care! They're not even _pretty_ girls, you just like them 'cause they waved at you!"

"I see you've joined the ranks of heroes who're suckered by femme fatale villains. 'Grats on pushing the stereotype."

"You have the worst banter of any hero I've ever seen. Well, heard. You know what I mean! Seriously, you'd benefit from a script writer."

"C'mon, hero, lets get you home before you fall asleep on your tiny alien feet. And remember to wait till after changing out of Gray Matter to use the toilet this time, I am not getting you unstuck twice in one week!"

"Oh, for the love of... Ben, do you know _why_ heroes like you don't go around killing people? 'Cause blood, like the blood from this knee you just scraped by climbing that tree when Grampa told you _not_ to, stains clothing all to heck! And no, I will _not_ help you clean... blargh! Fine. No, don't, just change and give it to me, it'll be quicker if I do it on my own without you in the way. Stupid brainless hero."

"You'll prob'ly have to stay up all night to make sure they don't come back, getting all exhausted and failing your test tomorrow from lack of study time, but hey, isn't that what heroes are for? Well, that and pushing action figures."

She hoped if she said it enough times, like a magic incantation or a prayer, it would become true.


	4. Chapter 4

4. Hero (Playing with Fire Remix)

She found him in an alley, timed out into Ben again, holding a dead cat and crying. It was the sort of crying that was angry, that wanted to be screaming and throwing things but just couldn't manage it and broke down into tears instead, the only other avenue for expression of intensely negative feelings.

Gwen approached cautiously, having a pretty good idea of what was going on, and not really sure of how to act. He'd probably killed it by accident when he was fighting Dr. Animo, the cluelessly criminal green scientist who just couldn't take a hint. Either that, or Animo had killed it. Either way, Ben was blaming himself. And maybe it was Ben's fault, and her instinctive reaction would ordinarily have been to tell him off for it.

But he was crying, and that changed everything.

He wasn't supposed to cry. He was supposed to act like his usual dumb self, and be reckless and impulsive, and she'd be the voice of reason and reign him in. He was punishing himself now, though, which made her redundant. She had no real reason to be here. Unless she wanted to try making him feel better, which wasn't really her area of expertise.

Still, seeing him cry, and tremble, and cradle the dead cat, and make those little choking sobbing sounds, she had to at least give it a try. There was no way she'd be able to forgive herself if she just left him like that to recover on his own.

"Ben?" Her tone was as gentle as she'd ever made it around him. "Are you okay?"

He jumped a bit, as if caught doing something wrong, and then slowly turned to her, holding out the cat slightly. "It was an accident," he said with the most absolutely pathetic voice she'd ever heard emerge from his mouth.

"It's okay, Ben." It was a lot like soothing a disturbed animal. Talk soothingly, approach slowly. Act like you understand. "I know." She didn't know, but she could guess, and that was good enough.

"I, I swear I didn't mean to... I was Heatblast, you know, you saw me turn into him, right..." Now that he was into the explanation, the words came out in a rushed jumble, desperate to prove something, or just to get the emotion across.

She had, and winced. For all the form's raw power, Heatblast had always been one of the more finicky forms in Ben's arsenal. It couldn't be easy, walking around when you were basically a living fire.

"Animo was trashing all these buildings, and I had to blow up stuff as it was falling to keep it from, you know, squishing people and stuff," he went on, voice still rushed. He wasn't crying anymore, but the tight look on his face told her the waterworks could start up again at any moment, if the wrong button got pushed. "And he ran off, and I was gonna chase him, but... there was a _cat_..." His voice cracked at the last word, eyes suddenly shining with new teardrops that didn't quite fall. "It'd gotten stuck underneath some fallen bricks, and I heard it meowing, and another part of the wall was gonna fall right on it and kill it... it was so close, and I just saw it when the wall was right about to fall, so I, I, didn't think, I just tried to grab it." His voice went unnaturally high and then hoarse, and when he blinked, more tears leaked out.

Well, jeez. Poor Ben. That explained it all. He'd made a mistake, but it was a totally natural one. Heatblast _couldn't_ pick things up, he'd burn them. But Ben had only had a little time to react, and he'd acted on instinct. The instincts of a human in an alien body made for a depressing conclusion to his little dilemma. She pondered hugging him, but when she eyed the cat, she decided to wait till he put it down. The thing looked like the most hideous dumpster-diving stray to have ever meowed. Missing both ears, one leg broken and then healed wrong and twisted up, the tail with multiple kinks, an eye socket gaping emptily. Scrawny enough to see the ribcage sticking out. Fleas crawling all over it. Fur matted and filthy where it wasn't missing in patches to show flaking skin. To her, it looked like the cat had been dying before Ben ever got on the scene... the burns were fairly minor compared to what life had done to the it. It had probably been sick already, and died of shock or something.

She told him as much, as tactfully-worded as she could think of, but it didn't comfort him any. Well, she hadn't expected him to listen to logic. He never did, after all.

"Even if it was sick, it wouldn't have died _yet_ if I hadn't hurt it. It's all my fault."

Having run out of original material, she paused a moment to rally up every reassuring cliché she could think of. He'd stopped crying, at least, so maybe she could get through to him now. "Oh, Ben. Come on, don't blame yourself. You did the best you could. Sometimes accidents happen. Don't forget all the good stuff you do as a hero, you save people's lives, like, every week almost."

"I wanna go find a place to bury it," he said, looking down at the unlovable, hideous stray like it was a valiant fallen soldier. "In the park, or out of town, or, or something."

Gwen blanched at the thought of carrying the pathetic, disgusting thing back to Grampa, and getting a trash bag or something, and digging a hole in what was probably someone's private property. He was in, what was it? The mourning stage. She had to talk him through it to get him to move on.

"Ben, that's just not practical and you know it. I know you're upset and all, but it was just a cat..."

"IT WAS NOT JUST A CAT!" he screamed right in her face, eyes dilated.

She jumped back, freaked out by the sudden display of emotion when she'd thought he'd been getting calmer. In the distance, she heard sirens... firemen or police or both, coming to clean up Animo's handiwork.

"Ben..." she said uncertainly, her mind giving her nothing but a big blank. She didn't have a clue what to say to him now.

He hugged the cat to his chest, suddenly subdued again. "It wasn't just a cat. It was an innocent bystander. Superheroes save innocent bystanders. That's why there _are_ superheroes. To save people."

They locked eyes, and a strange feeling went through Gwen. It was like she was watching him over a vast distance between them, as though she could see him standing on the other side of the Atlantic or something. She was strongly reminded, but she couldn't understand why her brain decided to remind her at this moment, that they had the same eyes. "You can't save them all, Ben. I know you want to, but that's not realistic."

"Are _superheroes_ realistic?" Ben's voice was bitter, accusing, and the glitter in his eyes seemed to be less tears than pent-up rage to her now. "Huh? How many totally freaky unrealistic things have we done during our summer vacation? All I had to do was one more stupid unrealistic thing, but I blew it!"

"You're only human-" she started to say, but he cut her off almost immediately.

"Oh, come _on_!" he hissed shrilly, voice near-hysterical. "I can be like twenty different non-human things, don't bring up that only human bullcrap with me! I should've been better!" Then his voice went back to quiet again. "I should've been. But I wasn't. I'm just a loser, like you always told me. I'm a loser who thought he could act like he was in a comic and everything would happen just like in _the Adventures of Universe-Guardian Astridia_ or something."

And like that, the gap was gone, and she understood him. So much snapped into place in that one moment, that it was like a revelation or a braingasm. She knew why he acted the way he did, and why he was acting the way he was right now. And she felt such an intense pang of sympathy for him that it made her chest hurt.

Life wasn't like the comics.

But could anyone blame Ben for being fooled, when he got the Omnitrix? Even she'd been lulled into it for a while, with the Lucky Girl stint, and she wasn't a tenth as big a fan of comics or cartoons as he was. It was so easy to just play at being a hero, till the playing and the reality were basically the same thing, and you didn't have to think about any of the unheroic stuff that _could_ happen, because they were lucky, and it never _did_. Not until now, anyway.

She walked closer and put an arm over his shoulders, leaning in close. Not a full hug, but she wasn't touching the dead cat, either, so it was a decent compromise. "Ben, stuff like this is going to happen sometimes. And it sucks, but it's part of life. You can't beat yourself up over it."

"But it _is_. And it shouldn't happen." She felt him shaking, and squeezed him a little tighter. "It never happens to real heroes."

"But you _are_ a real hero, Ben. So long as you don't let this change who you are. Come on. There's nothing you can do for that poor thing now, let's just go."

"Y-you really think I'm a hero, huh. Even now? You sure?" His voice shook with the weird mixture of grief and humor that people got when they were trying to get over something they weren't quite ready to get over yet.

"Of course I do, dorkwad," she lied with open affection in her tone. "C'mon. I'll bet Grampa's worried."

He put down the dead cat in a cleaner less ruined part of the alley, his movements careful and respectful. Gazing at it with him for a second, she almost forgot how gross the thing was. Almost. Then they started walking back. Away from the adventure, such as it was, and back to Grampa and regular life. She wondered what to say to Grampa, and then decided to let Ben lead. Whatever he said, she'd back it up one hundred and ten percent. He was looking better, now, wiping the tearstreaks from his face and moving a little away from her. After a bit, she slowed her pace just enough to walk a couple steps behind him, staring thoughtfully at his back.

Ben Tennyson was not a hero.

He'd never be a hero. Not that that was his fault. He'd get over it, and go back to being his normal self, and toss logic overboard for having fun and smashing faces whenever he felt like it, and exciting adventures would be had once more. And every once in a while there'd be a time, like this one, where the odds finally beat him and something that never happened in comic books would happen, but he'd get over those times too. She'd still get mad at him for acting like he always did, and continue prod him and caution him, and between the two of them they'd have their balance to keep things from getting too onesided during confrontations with unlikely criminals, just like always. But none of these things made a hero. And even if he turned cold, even if he started treating superheroing like a job to work hard at instead of fun to enjoy doing, he wouldn't become the Ben 10,000 from the future they'd seen. She wouldn't let it happen. And even if it did happen, it wouldn't make him any more of a hero, because accidents would still happen.

It wasn't his fault. It was the world's fault. The universe's, God's. Somebody's. Whatever cosmic jerk had set up everything so that there was no such thing as a person who saved everyone all the time, without fail. So that there could never be such a thing, no matter how many radical forms the Omnitrix snatched up. Crap would happen, totally pathetic, meaningless, depressing crap, and there wasn't a thing anyone could do about it. Yeah, it was the fault of a world that didn't allow for the existence of heroes. And Ben hadn't wanted to believe it was like that. He _needed_ to believe he was a hero. But in the end what he really was was a little boy who had no idea what he was doing, a selfish, impulsive little boy who just wanted to have fun and have everything happen like in the comics he loved to read. He'd just been born in the wrong world, that was all. She knew that ever after, whenever she thought of the real Ben, she'd be thinking of that little boy she saw in the alley, holding the dead cat, crying helplessly. A kid who had been blindsided by life and tricked into believing the world was more cinematic than it really was. A kid who hadn't been really prepared for the Omnitrix, and really, was there anything in life that could have prepared him anyway?

Gwen started to wonder, then, if it would have been better for Ben to have never found the Omnitrix. If he would have been happier living a totally ordinary life. Less stressed, definitely. Happier?

Would he have been happier?

No. No, he loved the Omnitrix and everything that came with it. And it was the same with her, though she had to think about it for a moment. She loved being with him and Grampa and watching them do incredible, unbelievable things. She loved doing incredible, unbelievable things herself. She loved the Omnitrix too, and the Plumbers, and the magic. If she'd been given the chance to throw it all away, to rewind time and start things minus the Omnitrix and everything that had happened after, she would've rejected it and been certain in rejection being the right course of action.

It was just that, in a crappy life like this, they all had to learn to take the bad with the good. And for all that she lied to Ben, and did her best to indulge this particular fantasy of his so he would stay the Ben she loved to fight with, she also had to give him his due credit... maybe he'd never be a hero in her eyes, but he was just about the best imitation anyone would ever see.


	5. Chapter 5

5. The Line

"Sorry, kids, this was the only room they had. Looks like you'll just have to share the bed."

"Gross! We wouldn't even have to _pay_ for a room if Gwen hadn't tried to, like, _distintegrate_ me with blue magic zappy rays!"

And though the accusation was essentially true, Gwen instinctively quibbled, cheeks flushed with shame and anger. It wasn't _her_ fault the spell had a different, unmentioned effect on inanimate objects. It wasn't _her_ fault that it had been raining at the time. It wasn't _her_ fault that Ben had pushed her and the magic meant for him had hit the roof of the van and let in the rain to leave their sleeping space with a foot of water!

"It wasn't going to distintegrate you. It was just going to turn you into an Egyptian hairless cat."

It _was_ all her fault.

How come _Ben_ always got away with acting like Ben, but the moment she stopped acting like Gwen, everyone suffered for it?

"You freak, you wanted to turn me into something without pants _or_ fur? With my junk just hanging out? What is _wrong_ with you?"

Gwen flushed heavier yet. She hadn't thought of that tiny detail. Truthfully, she was so used to Ben being technically naked in half his alien forms that she'd gotten used to it. The fur and the scales and everything usually covered that up discreetly, but every once in a while, usually with Wildmutt, she saw things flopping that were not meant to be seen by Gwenly eyes. It was one of the few gross trivia things about Ben she _hadn't_ confronted him on... what was the point, it'd just make him more self-conscious when he hadn't done anything wrong.

Grampa was ever the reconciler, and Gwen was glad he interrupted so she didn't have to think up a reply. "Okay, guys, settle down. Gwen, you know I don't mind you practicing your magic in the van, but please try to mind your surroundings more next time. And Ben, I think you should be more forgiving of people's attempted pranks." He smirked. "Or do I need to bring up the Stinkfly fruit rollup incident?"  
"Psh, whatever," Ben mumbled, flopping on the bed so that he bounced almost half a foot before settling down on the mattress, hands behind his head.

Gwen looked at the size of the bed. It was a double, but what they needed was a triple. If not quadruple, Grampa kinda counted for two regular people. Especially when he slept, all sprawled out like a dog. It was kind of cute. "Grampa, I don't think we can all fit on that bed. Comfortably anyway."

Grampa waved one hand negligently, settling into a chair that looked barely enough to hold him. "Don't be silly! You kids will take the bed, and I'll just go sleep in the van. The front compartment's not flooded."

Gwen felt flooded herself, but with guilt. "Don't do that. It's my fault we had to get a hotel room. And you paid for it. I'll sleep in the van." Aggravatingly, she knew what his response would be before he even said it, but she _had_ to make the offer!

"Nonsense, Gwen. A hard van seat is no place for a growing girl to get her beauty rest. Just give me a... aaaaahhhmmm... minute to stretch a bit, and then I'll head on to the van." His sentence was broken up by a huge yawn.

Gwen's eyes narrowed. For some reason she looked at Ben. He was staring at her with a subdued version of his usual grin, like he was daring her to do something. Or to _not_ do something. Or maybe he was just revelling in being the 'good' one for a change, who knew.

Screw it.

She let out a soft breath, and with it a few quiet words in a decidedly non-English language. Instantly, Grampa's head sunk a few inches, his body relaxed, his eyes fluttered closed. A gentle snore emerged from his lips.

She turned back at Ben, saw his smirk get smirkier and smirkier till it was a perfect grin, and couldn't totally help the upwards turning of her own lips, though she tried to fight it.

"Sleep spell, huh?" Ben commented, not sounding as impressed as she would have liked, but sounding more respectful than she would have expected. "Awesome."

"Yeah, thanks. C'mon, help me move him over to the bed."

"What? No way! Do you know how much Grampa _weighs_?!"

Anger surging in her, she reached for a pillow and smacked her cousin with it lightly. "Come on, doofus, what do you think I put him to sleep _for_? If we work together, we can..."

"Shyeah right! Besides, he looks pretty comfy the way he is."

She joined Ben in regarding their elderly relative. Grampa did _look_ comfy, and the spell _was_ supposed to ensure a full night's rejuvenating rest, but still. It was the principle of the thing!

It turned out to be one of her longer arguments with Ben. One of the rare ones where he actually used logic and had real points instead of just emotions, and she was hard-pressed to beat him on it. They went over the possibility of her morphing Grampa to move him (which she _refused_ to do on account of moral principles... and it would have probably broken the sleep spell), Ben using the watch to get strong enough to carry Grampa (they decided the risk of him getting Heatblast and accidentally burning the room down made it too risky), and a dozen other ideas and half-ideas before Gwen finally gave up in disgust.

"Fine! I was _trying_ to do something nice for Grampa, but if you want to be a jerk about it..."

"You _did_ do something nice for him," Ben countered surprisingly. "Look at 'im. I bet he hasn't slept that hard since he was in diapers. So he's not in the bed, so what. Stop worrying about it, like you have to worry about _everything_, and just relax."

"The last time I relaxed I put a hole in the roof of our van," she muttered sourly, retreating to the bathroom to change into pajamas, the best way to flee the conversation she knew of. Although the thin door wouldn't have stopped her from hearing if Ben had wanted to keep on talking about it, but for once, he seemed to take the hint.

They hadn't found the hotel until pretty late, which had its good and bad aspects... she was exhausted, but Ben was too, and that meant that she wouldn't have to jump into new arguments about him trying to watch tv or do other loud things while the rest of them were trying to sleep. When she came out, she looked at the bed with Ben on it like it was Vilgax.

"Ben, did you forget your pjs?" She could hardly blame him if he did. He looked like he was halfway asleep already, eyes half-shut and mouth a little slack.

"Ennn? Naw, m'just gonna sleep like this," he mumbled. He stripped off his cargo pants and tossed them vaguely in her direction.

Gwen recoiled instinctively as the pants flopped a foot away from her on the paper-thin carpet. Of course she'd seen Ben in his boxers before, they were practically the same as shorts. But he'd never actually taken off his pants in front of her before, and somehow it just seemed... it seemed... she didn't _know_ the word for it, but she didn't like it.

"You are so gross," she told him flatly, then sighed in resignation. Boys would be boys, and all that junk. If he heard her, he didn't have a witty comeback, working his way from being half asleep to being two-thirds asleep. "Ben? Ben. Look at me." Hands on her hips, she raised her voice as much as she dared with Grampa asleep. The spell would make him harder to wake up than normal, but not so much that he couldn't wake up at all if things got _too_ loud.

"Huhn? Whaaaat?" He grinned a bit. "You look dorky when you're trying to act bossy in pink."

She snorted, unimpressed with the comeback. Her pink pajamas were comfy, and they were a gift from her mother from last Christmas, too. "You see the space between the two pillows on the bed? That's a line," she explained, drawing her finger along the air over the spot in demonstration, all the way down the length of the mattress. "The left side is your side, and the right side is my side. And if you cross the line, I'll turn your Omnitrix into a frog."

"Sure, whatever."

That was about the best she'd expected from him, so she flicked off the lights and slipped underneath the blanket and sheet. She faced away from Ben very deliberately, but she normally slept on her right side, not her left, so it was weird. Then again, trying to get to sleep with Ben so close to her was _also_ weird. She could always cheat and use the sleep spell on herself, but she wasn't quite certain enough of her powers to do that yet. If something went wrong and a magical command was needed to break the spell, no one would be able to wake her up. She pictured Grampa hauling her snoozing body to visit Charmcaster in prison for a cure. What a fun meeting _that_ would have been. Ben would've hounded her about it for _years_.

The sound and feel of Ben shifting around was bugging her, too. He was twitchy. Kept moving a leg, or an arm, or his head. Rolling around. Putting a hand behind his head, then in front of him, then crossing both arms. Shuffle, shuffle, rustle, shift. Never before had Gwen had any idea that something as soft and inoffensive as the sound of cloth moving could be so aggravating.

After ten minutes of it, she gave up, and rolled onto her left side with a huff. "Give it a rest, Ben, you're driving me crazy here."

Ben yawned, which she heard more than saw. In the darkness the most she could really make out were his eyes, dim little slits of green. "Sorry. M'cold."

"That's why God gave us this wonderful thing called blankets, genius," she said with as much dry humor as she could muster given how tired she was. She ignored the little bit of unease that welled up at the thought of there being no additional barriers between her and a male cousin lying an inch away from her in bed. Nothing but clothes, of course, and an imaginary line. It was a stupid thing to get unnerved about, anyway. Ben was trying to be chivalrous or some dumb thing, but hadn't anyone ever told him chivalry was deader than Ghostfreak?

He didn't need any more persuading than that, and got under the covers with the heavy, wooden movements of someone who was operating more under instinct than conscious thought. That issue resolved, Gwen closed her eyes and tried to ignore the sound of Ben's breathing, the latest in the parade of normally insignificant sounds that were intent on depriving her of sleep.

Five more minutes of nothing and she started to count sheep. On the twentieth sheep she felt something warm brushing her elbow. Annoyed far in disproportion to the offense of the crime, her eyes snapped open and she glared at the blanket-covered lump of her cousin's head.

"Ben, you went over the line," she whispered furiously.

"Nnnn?"

"You crossed the line. Stay on your side."

"Nnnkay." Ben pulled back with a kind of brief full body jerk, plainly the most energy he planned on expending on respecting her boundaries. It would have to do.

A little after that, she started noticing that since his head was under the covers, and he was facing her, she could feel his breath on her neck, sharp little twin wisps from his nostrils. She tried to adjust herself so she couldn't feel it, but if she shifted down her feet got constricted by the tightly-tucked sheet, and if she shifted up any her head hit the headboard. Then she pulled the collar of her pajama shirt up, but the thin cloth barely did anything to stop the flow of air. Getting up on top of the blanket like Ben had been, with the most unobtrusive movements she could manage, left her chilly. Finally, she settled for being under the blanket but on top of the sheet, and she expected that to work, but then the way Ben's body tightened the sheet on one side started driving her crazy.

Admitting defeat, she slid underneath the sheet again, held herself still and straight as a mummy in a coffin, and closed her eyes, praying for sleep. Feeling his body heat nearby, and listening to his breathing, and being very, very annoyed with these signs of life without really knowing why. It got her to thinking... why _couldn't_ she relax, like Ben had told her to? What was it about this that irritated her? They were around each other a ton, often just as close as this, sometimes closer, and it didn't bother her then. She'd even rode him in some of his alien forms, and been carried in his arms in others, and it hadn't given her the annoyed feeling she was getting now. What was the big deal?

Half-drowned memories, the kind that only came awake when the body was mostly asleep, floated up and drifted through her line of thought. Remembering being very young, and completely unselfconscious. A lot like an animal, really, responding to sensations and feelings without much thought. Being carried by her father's big, strong arms. Being craddled gently by her mother, lullabies sung in her ear. Cuddling, hugging, being close and enjoying it as much as a cat or dog enjoyed being stroked.

That was it.

That was what bothered her.

She'd grown up, and growing up meant growing out of kid stuff like that. Regressing to being a baby was immature, and... and...

The word she wanted to use for it was _dangerous_.

She didn't know why, but some part of her, the part that tried hard to be responsible and serious, was totally creeped out by casual displays of closeness with Ben. No, not just creeped out.

_Scared_.

She was scared of it, and she didn't even know why, or what she was supposed to be scared of, or whether she was supposed to be scared at all.

Ben was family, right?

Nothing the matter with being close to family.

Ben was a bragging, irresponsible, goofy jerk.

Of course she couldn't get to sleep lying next to him, she practically _hated_ him! She wished it was more than just practically. Life was so much easier when you could just toss people into the 'wholehearted enemy' box or 'unreservedly trusted friend' bin. But no, nothing involving Ben could _ever_ be easy. Everything he did, he did the hard way. Of course, he'd probably say the same thing about _her_, a thought that put a wry smile on her lips.

His foot poked into hers, the nail of a toe digging into her skin, and she twitched, thoughts suddenly disarrayed by a new spurt of irrational anger. "_Ben_, you're on _my_ side..."

Her voice died off as she got a better look at his face, by now partially unrolled from the covers. He was snoozing as soundly as she wished she was, dirty hair as disordered as her thoughts, breathing as steadily reliable as their habitual bickering. She was suddenly filled with two intense and utterly conflicting desires, to wrap an arm around him and cuddle him like a teddy bear, or to shove him violently off the bed.

"Goddammit," she said to the darkness, the first time she'd ever actually cussed aloud, despite all the insane situations she'd been in. Rather than giving in to either stupid urge, she did nothing at all, and eventually, drifted off to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

6. Adrenaline

Gwen woke up with slow, foggy reluctance, and found herself naked and tied to a table, with a ballgag in her mouth.

What the hell was going on?!

Memories came back in bits and pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces sprinkled down at random. Ben had been going to take her to see a movie tonight, ostensibly, just to get her to stop talking about it. The one based on her favorite book. He'd gotten cheap tickets for a theatre in a bad part of town, but beggars couldn't be choosers, right? She'd decided to walk over to meet him to save on money. Gas prices were insane these days. And then... that's right, she'd been mugged! Someone had jumped her while she was crossing the park, and there'd been a pinprick, she'd assumed it was a knife or something. And then darkness.

She'd been drugged, apparently, and brought here. A rotten little house with peeling paint and flickering lights, with the rumble of trains nearby. Maddeningly, for all her growing competence with magic, she hadn't a single spell in her arsenal that she could use with both her hands bound and her mouth gagged, so she was as helpless as any normal person would have been in the same situation.

It was dim, but not so dim that she couldn't make out the back of an adult male shuffling around in the next room, door hanging ajar in a way that said it hadn't closed properly in ages. Unable to just give up, she fought in the only way she could at the moment, by watching and analyzing. The guy was in baggy clothes, and had tussled brown hair that looked like it had never seen a comb. In fact, there was a disturbing similarity to the mysterious assailant and Ben.

The first thing that came to mind, with a surprisingly clinical lack of emotion, was that maybe Ben had finally gone totally insane from all the pressure of superheroing and everything else. Maybe he'd kidnapped her, taken her here to do... whatever... before putting the cap on their arguments once and for all. It wasn't the sort of thought you really believed when you were thinking it, but it was still the first thing she thought of.

Then the guy turned around, and that little macabre fantasy died as quickly as it'd been born. Ben had never had such a scraggly beard, such bloodshot eyes, such mottled and discolored skin. He was carrying... things... she decided not to look at too clearly, despite her desire to inspect every detail for a sliver of hope. She knew if she let herself see all that stuff, she'd probably start to freak out, and hyperventilating with a ballgag on would probably be really uncomfortable. He walked over and put the tools and other paraphernalia on the floor next to the table, and the next thing that happened was something she couldn't block out, no matter how much she wanted to. Stupidly clear, loud in a way it couldn't be in real life, she heard the distinctive sound of pants unzipping.

Well, that explained why she was naked, now didn't it? After all the aliens, the monsters, the genetic experiments gone wrong, the secret societies and cultists, this was the guy who'd end up offing her. A psychotic pervert, the kind that got featured in cop shows and gritty crime novels. She realized she should be a lot more scared, but the whole thing still had a feeling of unreality to it. Maybe that feeling was last remnants of the drug, whatever it had been, in her system. Or maybe she was just in shock. If she was, she didn't want to come out of it. She didn't want to accept, emotionally, what was happening, what was _going_ to happen. Would it be better to close her eyes? No, then she'd just get unnerved by every little sensation and sound. She'd just let her eyes glaze over, and see without seeing. Focus on the movements and the colors without analyzing them. And that way, if he made some mistake, if her bonds or gag got loosened, she'd be able to fight.

His pants pooled on the floor, and he opened the flap in his boxers to show something she did her very best not to see. Her eyes focused on the ceiling in desperation, but then jerked back to her kidnapper as a familiar voice cried out urgently, followed by the sound of wood crunching.

"GWEN!"

And that would be her cousin to the rescue, just in time. In Fourarms, if she judged his voice correctly. She felt such an intense surge of joyful relief that for a second she thought she was going to pass out from it. Thank God Ben couldn't let go of playing hero. He'd probably tracked her by scent or something in another form, and then switched over when he found the door barred. The door that was currently in itty-bitty little splinters all over the room.

Ben as Fourarms charged through a doorway that barely survived his movement through it, and then froze midcharge, taking in the whole... situation. She met his gaze desperately, saw his shock, and saw it transmute rapidly into rage. In a blur of red, her least favorite criminal was smacked aside and into a wall, where he went down and stayed down. Then her bonds were torn off like tissue, and the gag followed.

Her clothes were nearby, piled in a careless bundle in a corner, and she bolted for them, dressing more quickly than she'd ever dressed before, despite the shaking in her hands. Gwen felt her cheeks burning, and marvelled a little that she had enough energy to spare to be intensely embarrassed at Ben seeing her naked. Such a little, meaningless thing in a situation like this, but right now it was the main thing her mind latched onto.

By the time she was dressed and therefore more or less rational again, she became aware that Ben was paying attention to the kidnapper again. Four huge fists clasping at the guy, and squeezing slowly.

"Y'know, this is actually great for me," he said in a strange voice, somewhere between conversational and angry. "'Cause I've been doing this hero gig for a few years now, and I've started t'wonder what it'd feel like to actually kill someone." Ben's grin was an ogre's grin, an animal's grin, a baring of teeth with malice. As his lips parted, his eyes narrowed, an intimidating stare. The would-be killer was trying to say something, but it was hard, with that much pressure on your whole body, especially the chest. "And I'm sure no one'll miss a piece of trash like you, right? Right."

Dear God, she'd stumbled out of one nightmare and into another one. Ben hadn't ever talked to a villain like this before. But then, he'd never gone up against a villain in these kinds of circumstances. It was a violation of everything that she and Ben loved so dearly about their superheroing, so apparently Ben had decided it was time to try being an antihero or something. She had to stop him, before he went too far and did something he'd never forgive himself for later on.

"Ben! Ben, it's_okay_, he didn't do anything to me. You got here just in time."

"It's _not_ okay," Ben snarled. Those massive red fingers constricted further, and the kidnapper, who Gwen actually felt a little (a very, _very_ little) sorry for by now, cried out in pain. "This asshole went over the line. Way over the line. So I'm gonna return the favor."

"Dammit, Ben, stop listening to your testosterone and listen to _me_! I _told_ you, nothing happened. I'm okay! Everything's okay! Let's just toss this freak to the cops so he can rot in a cell like he deserves!"

"No..." His voice was a harsh whisper. "I won't forgive him for this. Just turn your back, Gwen, this'll all be over in a sec."

"You moron, you stole that line from that Japanese cartoon you were watching last night. Don't try to act like something you're not, it just makes you look more ridiculous. I know you're trying to protect me, but you've_done_ that. Mission accomplished, hero. Let it go."

"And who says I can't be a killer, if that's who I wanna be now, for just a second?" Did she actually hear the kidnapper's ribs crack? It had to be her imagination. The wheezing gasps were definitely real, though. Just a little more pressure and this would be one argument with Ben she'd have lost big time.

She put a hand on one of his arms, not trying to pull it off, knowing that would be futile. But just to let him feel her touch, hoping it would calm him down. And she looked into his eyes, and made him look back, instead of staring at that evil little pervert who was no threat to anyone anymore. "Ben, that is not who you are. And it never will be. You know that. I know that. Grampa knows that. So stop trying to fool yourself. Just drop him, okay? Do it for me." She smirked slightly. "So I can give him a good kick in the stomach before you turn him in to the police."

And finally, she got through to him. Grudgingly, with an expression somewhere between shame and understanding, he set the guy down. True to her word, Gwen gave the kidnapper a series of short, sharp kicks until she was satisfied with his state of agonized immobility. It wasn't really a superhero thing to do either, but it sure felt good, and helped to soothe all the emotions boiling around inside her.

Their evening was pretty much ruined, although at least there wasn't any blood on Ben's hands. She and Ben spent a long few hours talking to the police, and the movie tickets were, of course, wasted. At least they hadn't taken much out of Ben's pockets. Ben insisted on walking her home, to her complete lack of surprise. Definitely an awkward walk, but she had to admit to herself, even if she hated it, that she _did_ feel a little safer with him around. It wasn't logical, she was just as capable of defending herself as he was, but that was feelings for you.

"You made such a big drama out of it," she said dryly, to fill up the silence in the middle of the walk. "It was just one more bad guy to lock up in the end. You took living in the moment a lil too far that time." Smirking, she punched him in the arm, which dissolved the serious expression he was looking at her with quite satisfactorily. "But I knew you'd come to your senses and remember you're not the Terminator."

"I _could've_ done it," he muttered irritably. It was unclear whether he was trying to convince her or himself. "If you'd said something different. If you'd told me to squeeze him till his eyeballs popped out, I woulda done it."

"But I didn't, and you didn't."

"But I coulda."

"But you didn't."

"But I _coulda_."

"But you _didn't_."

"Only 'cause you said that wasn't who I was! If you'd said I was something different..."

"You would've been something different?" she finished softly, keeping her eyes on the sidewalk. Some things were easier to talk about without eye contact.

"I think so. Yeah."

"So, what would've happened if it'd been Grampa in there, and he'd told you to grind that guy into paste? Would you've done that?" She wasn't sure why she asked. But Ben had no reply for her, and they kept quiet for the rest of the walk to her apartment.


	7. Chapter 7

7. The Little Dog Laughed to See Such Sport

It always struck Gwen as funny how her and her cousin's respective drinking habits turned out. It ended up being the exact opposite of how she would have predicted. It just went to show, that knowing magic didn't make you a fortune teller. Not that they drank a _lot_, far from it. But they did do it just enough to have formed certain patterns of behavior around the activity.

She, of course, being a responsible and mature girl, stayed away from 'those' kinds of parties when she was growing up. There was too much studying to do most of the time to bother with going to a party with a bunch of wasted strangers and social enemies, and celebrating football victories or getting felt up by some wasted clown didn't really appeal. So Gwen didn't drink as a casual event until college. She still avoided the rowdier parties, but she was in a respectable enough institute of higher learning that there were more... dignified... festivities to attend as well. The kind of parties she liked, with people as smart as her (and some, more than she liked to admit, _smarter_) and preferences for intellectual discourse over misbehaving tomfoolery.

It was the foreign accents that had really done it. She hadn't even realized it at the time, but the few students with exotic accents, particularly the English ones, really intimidated the fool out of her. She couldn't have refused a drink from _them_, it would have been rude. Especially when they started quoting the years on the bottles! She was an adult, she had to appreciate the stuff even though it tasted disgusting, because well-aged wines were something adults appreciated. After a while she realized that alcohol had another effect on her besides making her tastebuds shrivel: it caused her to stop worrying. With a glass or two, she was suddenly free to laugh, to poke fun, to express herself as though her highminded colleagues were no more intimidating than her goofy cousin. Drinking, not to be an idiot, but to have fun around people you already liked, was something that had never occurred to her. But she found that she liked it, and began to take drinking as a happy, casual social affair.

Ben had turned out totally different. He'd turned out the way intellectual artists and authors and other people of great vision so often did, even if he lacked their high aspirations. She drank for fun, but he drank for the exact opposite reason. He drank from grief and frustration.

As long as she'd known him, whenever something went seriously wrong in his life, or he took a setback too hard, Ben had had a predictable set of reactions. He'd either take it out on someone with his fists, act out by pulling the most unwarrantedly cruel pranks possible on anyone nearby, or sulk until someone (often her) bullied him into venting his emoness. Those were his three basic reactions to something unpleasant he couldn't or didn't want to deal with. But when he got old enough to go to the liquor store, he added a fourth option.

Now, whenever things got too much to handle, he'd often just take a walk to the store to buy the cheapest, strongest 'I'm gonna get drunk listening to bad music and there's nothing you can do about it' booze there was. Then he'd find a place to himself, where he wouldn't be bothered, sit down with his drink, and proceed to relentlessly down bottle after bottle until he passed out. And no matter how bad his hangovers were, they were never bad enough to keep him from doing it again later on.

It'd made her angry, the first time. She'd lectured him on behaving more like the responsible adult he wasn't. The second time, she'd gotten worried, and had a long talk with Grampa about it. The third time, she and Grampa had staged an intervention, discreetly minus Ben's parents in hopes that the privacy would prove to their benefit in persuading him. That had been a pretty laughable affair; Ben had just turned into XLR8 and avoided them for half a month. That was when they all learned that XLR8 could _drink_ as fast as he could run when sober. And that a drunken XLR8 trying to run was one of the most hilarious things on the planet, regardless of your feelings towards the drunkenness itself. They did end up having a series of talks about it, though, and a promise was wrangled from Ben to not make it a big habit.

And he kept his word, saving his bouts of booze guzzling for 'special occasions.' Between her, Grampa, and his parents all nagging him over it, he really couldn't afford to get away with the little disgusting ceremony more than twice a year or so. But that seemed to be enough for him.

Gwen suspected it was about time again. It'd been quite a while since the last one, and she'd recognized that stony, self-pitying expression on his face when he'd failed to catch an exceptionally lucky bank robber this morning. That robber'd shot a hostage. The lucky part, for the crook, had been that the Omnitrix had had one of its spats of fickleness and coughed up Ripjaws miles away from any large bodies of water. Ben had _not_ been a happy camper.

So this evening, assuming she'd read him correctly, she was gonna try something different. But she had to _find_ him first. He had a number of little spots he liked to brood and gradually go unconscious in. His apartment was _not_ one of them, as he had become well aware that people could barge in at any moments. Even locking the door wasn't always helpful, as she could sling off a simple spell to work around such crude devices and Grampa had a few Plumber tools that ate locks for breakfast. So she made a wandering circle around town, hitting desolate, lonely locale after desolate, lonely locale. All the places people went to get away from other people. After about an hour she found her target in a rundown park in the poor district, on a thoroughly graffitied bench, flanked by two brown bags and a bottle clenched in one hand. When she parked and walked up, he started guiltily, then stiffened, face going mostly blank with a hint of sullen in it.

"Whadda you want?" Almost, but not quite accusing. The urge to smack him was overpowering, but repressed with years of long practice at repressing things that wanted out. She was grateful to realize he couldn't have been drinking too long; he only had the one half-full bottle out, no empty ones. "If you wanna gimme another annoying speech about how disappointed Miss Perfect Valewhatsit is in me, then you can save it, okay?"

"Well, I ran out of good speeches, so I decided to give you a break this time around," she said smoothly, pushing a bag out of the way to sit next to him.

They spent a good moment staring mindlessly at the cracked pavement in front of them.

"So, why're you here then if you're not gonna try to make me feel bad?" He sounded lost, mystified. She couldn't blame him. She'd tossed their usual script out the window and there weren't any easy prewritten responses to use anymore.

"Well, lessee." She tapped her fingers together in a deliberate exaggeration of a thoughtful gesture. "You already seem like you feel bad, right? So there's no point in me making you feel even worse. I'm only _that_ mean to you when you're sober." She smirked at him, hoping to get some kind of positive reaction, but he didn't even look at her. Annoying. Didn't he appreciate what she was trying to do for him? "And I figured it might be more productive if you tried alcohol the way I do, for a change. Y'know, around people."

Ben grimaced and took an exceptionally large swig from his bottle, the gulp loud. "I don't think that's gonna make anything better."

"Maybe not," she admitted, "but it can't make it worse, right? So you might as well give it a try."

"Heh. You sure you wanna get drunk around me?" He said it in a joking tone, but a subtle twist to his expression, the way he looked at her furtively, gave some self-mocking suggestion or other to the question that she did her best to not notice.

"Only if you promise to behave yourself." She'd gone back to their script, replying to joking banter with joking banter, but she couldn't help the slight constriction of her throat that threw her tone off ever so slightly on the word 'behave.' If Ben noticed, he didn't give any sign. But then, he never did, did he?

"As much as I ever do." He grinned, and it was something like his normal one. Almost happy.

"Well, if that's your best, I _suppose_ that'll have to do."

Silently, he offered her a second bottle, identical to the one he'd been drinking from. She inspected it briefly. Just as she'd expected, it was a trashy beer, some imitation brand she'd never heard of. Shrugging, she uncapped it and took a moderate swig.

Swallowing slowly, Gwen smacked her lips, intentionally loud and rhythmic.

"Tastes like crap."

Ben _almost_ laughed, but when he realized it the sound died a strangled death in his throat, becoming a sort of muffled chuckle. "I know, right? But sometimes... sometimes you wanna drink something you don't like."

"If you say so, angst boy." She took a smaller sip, and found it went down a bit easier once she knew what to expect. "You know the cops caught that guy, right?"

"Yeah." The response was devoid of any joy at the fact.

"And the hostage wasn't your fault. That thing'd gone down before you were even there."

"I _know_. I'm not a kid anymore, Gwen, you don't have to treat me like I'm an idiot looking to hate myself for no good reason, ya know!"

"I don't?" she said with carefully calculated dignity, and then ruined it all by sticking her tongue out at him. He glared a glare filled with sour disgust, and then stuck his tongue too. She quickly withdrew hers, feeling an odd twisting sensation in her gut that she didn't let show on her face. There was something about that particular form of teasing, especially when returned, that had stopped feeling fully innocent and normal since teenagerhood onwards. "Poor self-esteem if you ask me," she went on, assuming a lecturing tone. "Always bragging, always overreacting when things go south. Deepseated insecurity and abandonment issues, most likely.

"Get bent."

"Possible Oedipus complex with a touch of ADD and/or martyrdom idealization." Her voice was practically British nanny now.

"Oedipus... hey, I know what that means, I _liked_ my Greek mythology class! You take that back!"

She grinned wickedly. They were back on track, good and proper. It was relieving, making everything tight inside her relax again. The script had a format, the script had canned responses, the script had rules. The script had safety. "Make me, you drunken five o'clock shadowed hobo."

"HEY! I _told_ you I've only been growing this beard for five days!"

"Are you sure about that? Seems more like it's been five weeks if you ask me."

"You are _such_ a liar!"

A tiny pause, and then, they simultaneously made faces at each other, as if their brains were on the same goofy channel.

She giggled.

She didn't mean to!

It just came out!

She wasn't sure why, but it sent an icy tendril of nausea and fear through her right after she did it, shattering again her briefly recaptured emotional equilibrium. Warning beacons were going off. Danger. Danger. Danger.

Ben's eyes widened in disbelief. "Did you just _giggle_ at me?"

"No! It was the drink! You're hearing things!" she spluttered.

He shook his head slowly. "This... this is weird."

She settled down, beating her irrational emotions into submission for the greater good. "But it's not bad. Right?"

"Naw, I guess not."

They drank a bit more in quiet. It was extremely awkward. Ben finished his first bottle and started on his second.

"Remember the first time you had a real drink?" she asked suddenly, when she couldn't stand the silence anymore.

"Oh, God, how could I _forget_."

"You snuck some of Grampa's fancy liquor, had half a glass all in one gulp, and spent the next minute and a half throwing up."

Of course, with a humiliating reminder of the past like that, Ben just had to make a counterattack, even if the only weapon he had for the subject at hand was decidedly inferior. "You had two sips, and decided to spit it out the window. Heheh."

"He wasn't even mad," she went on, her fondness for their grandfather warming her tone. "Was proud of us for expanding our cultural horizons."

"Hahah, yeah. Our parents would've never let us vacation with him all those summers if they'd had half a clue about all the stuff we did with Grampa."

"And that's not even counting the aliens."

They talked, idle whimsical comments, on and off for about half an hour more, and drank a bit more, too. But Ben didn't get totally plastered, and neither did she. They took a cab back to their respective homes (she wasn't worried over her car... even if any thief or vandal had wanted to screw with the broken down old nag, she'd tossed some protective runes on it that'd keep it safe from anything short of an angry Vilgax), and that was the end of it.

Until about half a year later, when Ben felt like being all depressed and tipsy again. And this time, he seemingly casually invited her along. And they had some beer, but not a whole lot, and they talked some, but not a whole lot. Mostly they just sat quietly with each other. Nothing got resolved. None of the things that got Ben into brooding mode in the first place ever got talked through or fixed. The only difference was, instead of being gloomy alone, he was gloomy with company. Gwen decided to force herself to be satisfied with the arrangement. At least now, he couldn't do anything really stupid while drunk. Unless it was for her personal entertainment, anyway.


	8. Chapter 8

8. A Fitting End

"He's probably just going a little soft upstairs, but that's okay. Old folks are allowed to get forgetful and then make up stuff to replace what they forgot."

It was one of those idle comments that hadn't been meant to mean much, but it was also one of the few things Gwen had ever said to Ben that she seriously wished she could take back.

Sparked by a particularly wild and simultaneously vague (it was annoying, how often both adjectives applied to Grampa's stories) account of past Plumber glories, she'd said it without putting much thought into it. And only half-seriously, at that. Ben had totally blown it off... at first. But the next day, he asked her, out of the blue:

"D'you really think he's going... you know?"

She'd shrugged and said it was a possibility. Grampa'd been getting noticeably more forgetful about trivial things over the years. And his stories did seem to get a bit crazier every time he told them, especially lately. But that could've just been him opening up more and sharing more details he'd skipped in the first tellings, right? Anyway, it didn't matter to her. She loved him regardless.

It mattered to Ben. How much, she didn't fully understand until more years went by, and she observed the subtle shift in his behavior towards their grandfather.

For one thing, Ben suddenly took up a more active interest in conversation with Grampa, particularly debating and other logic-intensive chatting. He'd pick a topic, do some research first to pretend like he wasn't the lazy ignoramus he really was, ask Grampa about it, and the verbal dance would commence, Ben's steps clumsy but fervent. Storytime also altered a bit, with Ben asking a lot more questions and getting into specific details he wouldn't have bothered caring about before. And then there were the crossword puzzles. Ben got them for himself, or so he said, but whenever he got stuck, it was Grampa he asked to help him out, even though she was just as good at crosswords. Lastly were the Christmas and birthday presents. Ben had always had a tendency to give presents in a very flotsam and jetsam way, grabbing half a dozen little things that he thought might appeal to the person in question instead of doing just one big thing like most people would. And that continued, but within the semi-random assortment of mini-gifts, Grampa would always get a brain teaser style game. One of those test your knowledge, keep your reflexes and hand-eye coordination up to par things.

Grampa enjoyed it all well enough, so Gwen figured she shouldn't interfere. But year after year, as she watched this behavior, she developed a gradual sympathetic ache for Ben. He really worried over it, and it was an essentially alien worry to her, but she felt for him anyway. Old people went senile, that was what they _did_, and Grampa was doing quite well for someone his age, still well enough that any minor thought process impairments could still be just paranoia on the part of his grandchildren.

She even asked Ben about it straight out, one time.

"Why does it weird you out so much?"

His reply hadn't been too helpful. "It just _does_, okay?!" And then he'd stalked off to sulk somewhere with his headphones blasting angry music, so she hadn't been able to delve further.

But one day, when she was passing a comic book store, and randomly saw a comic cover with a wrinkled old man in robotic samurai armor, she understood, in a little flash of insight.

Of course, that was it.

Comic book heroes never got senile. That wasn't a very dignified way to go, now was it? They got tortured to death, fell dramatically off of cliffs, were subject to all sorts of combat-related trauma. But to have the mind, the personality, just wither away bit by bit? You couldn't squeeze much heroic drama out of that, just depressing Lifetime drama. And Ben hated Lifetime with a passion. He wouldn't even stay in the same room if it was on the tv.

She wondered, then, if Ben would be able to emotionally handle Grampa dying in some madcap alien fight better than Grampa getting senile, maybe having to be put in a nursing home if it got really bad. If Ben would be more at home with Grampa getting blown up, explosively decompressed, or dismembered than Grampa forgetting who his relatives were. Then she stopped wondering, because she decided she already knew the answer.


	9. Chapter 9

9. Blink or Die

Feeling restless for some nameless reason, Gwen reluctantly opened her eyes into tiny slits, letting them adjust to the dimness of the unlit van. It was just late enough that she was annoyed that she wasn't asleep yet.

When she could see enough to make out fuzzy details, her skin crawled. Ben, on the opposite bunk, was staring wide-eyed right at her, with this weird, serious expression. It was like something out of a psycho stalker movie or something.

"What are you _looking_ at me for?" she hissed with quiet fury, not wanting to wake Grampa. Jeez, how long had he been _doing_ that? Had he done it other nights too and she just hadn't noticed until now? No, that was an overreaction, to assume it was a habit was too low an assumption to apply even to Ben.

"I'm not looking at you," he whispered back with equal anger, immediately shifting his eyes elsewhere. But she wasn't fooled. He _had_ been looking at her. "I can't sleep."

"Well, that's no reason to stare at me like that. Now _I_ can't sleep and it's your fault." It wasn't her most logical argument, but luckily Ben wasn't the kind of guy to notice logic or its absence in arguments in the first place. And the extent of her creeped outness was interfering with her arguing ability.

"Fine, whatever." He rolled over to face the wall of the vehicle, posture radiating sulkiness.

Satisfied, she closed her eyes, pulled her blanket over her head, and tried to get to sleep for the second time tonight. Only she could still feel the prickle on her skin, that little animal instinct akin to the senses prey used to know when predators were nearby. Never before had Ben's very presence in the van seemed so intrusive, such a violation of whatever she felt like life was supposed to be. Why had she agreed to go on this stupid vacation for a _second_ summer anyway? Ben annoyed her almost constantly, and Grampa practically enabled her cousin's immaturity with his lax discipline. _Her_ parents would've given Ben a real upbringing. Made him comb his hair, and brush his teeth twice a day, and definitely put a stop to all the stupid pranks. The line of thought gave her an odd twinge. She missed her parents and hated them at the same time, and couldn't figure out why. It was weird.

Unable to stand it anymore, she snapped her eyes open and tossed the blank down to her shoulders, hitting Ben with a ferocious glare. But all that was in vain, he was still staring at the wall. Or maybe asleep by now, for all she knew. No. No, he wasn't asleep, because he'd heard her moving and was rolling over now to look at her again. She hastily closed her eyes. He hadn't caught her. There was no way he could know she'd been glaring at him.

Somehow, he knew anyway. "Nerdgirl, you're a big fat hypocrite."

"I don't know what you're talking about. That's a nice long word for you though, Benny. Did you look that one up in the dictionary?" she taunted to try and regain the upper hand.

"Naw, I'm just smart like that."

She snorted in amused scorn.

"You're a hypocrite _and_ a liar. Tampon on fire." It was probably just her imagination, the perverted little smirk on his lips. Probably. It _had_ to be, because there was no way he could've known she'd gotten her first period this month, Grampa had been super discreet! She wanted to hit him.

"Unlike _some_ people, _I_ don't lie, Ben Tennyson," she huffed self-righteously, voice almost going above a whisper in her indignation.

It was Ben's turn to snort now. "Shyeah, right. So you told your parents _everything_ that happened on our first summer trip with Grampa?"

Why did the stare of his eyes remind her of that _Gremlins_ movie now? The scene with the Christmas tree, with eyes just peeking out like ornaments. Perfectly disguised and predatory. It was worse, somehow, that she could only see a little bit of his face, the rest covered by the blanket. "I creatively worded my answers to tell them everything except the weird stuff, without actually lying to them directly about anything," she said with intense care and precision, her tone blank as fresh snow.

"Pff, you crack me up. Denial, baby." The way he used the word 'baby' made her want to go over there and hit him. The way he twisted it, it was almost like a lewd insult. "Everyone lies. Some people say they don't and pretend like they're better than everyone else, but they lie too."

"Well, we both have to admit I'm definitely better than you in every possible way."

"You just keep tellin' yourself that."

She wanted to hit him. She wanted to hit him so bad. Or at least yell at him properly. But nooooo, they just had to start a verbal sparring match in the middle of the night instead of at a more reasonable hour. She blamed herself for talking to him in the first place. She knew better. Talking to Ben was nothing but trouble. He never understood anything.

Conversation ran out, but they didn't sleep. They just settled in like soldiers in their respective defensive bunkers, and stared at each other as though they were looking across a war zone. Which, in a metaphorical kind of way, they were. The main difference was that they hadn't actually tried to kill each other yet. Yet.

It turned into a formalized, if unstated, staring contest somewhere along the way. She didn't want to try and sleep with him looking at her, and he was too competitive to try to go to sleep before she gave up first. It could've been a funny, playful kind of thing, but throughout it, as her eyes watered and burned and ached, all she could think of was how annoying he was and how much she wanted him gone.

And it was definitely a violation of her identity, that they had to have the same eyes. Green eyes were supposed to be _special_. But nooo, he had to have them too. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all. And it was _doubly_ not fair that she blinked first, leaving Ben to snicker in self-assured victory and roll over, sinking into the relaxed slumber of the innocent (rather inappropriately, in Gwen's opinion). Just one more thing to feed the little jerk's ravenous ego, like he needed it.


	10. Chapter 10

10. Private Matters

For all the crazy things she experienced, the most viscerally disturbing thing Gwen learned to deal with while traveling with her grandfather and cousin was the perfectly normal activity of masturbation.

She wasn't stupid. She had an active and inquisitive mind, given to asking questions and looking up the answers on the internet or at a library when she couldn't figure them out on her own. Gwen Tennyson became aware of the mechanical facts behind masturbation a full three years before her parents considered her fit to recieve 'the talk.' But knowing the details and experiencing them as a part of everyday life were too very different things.

Girls were pretty varied. Some of them _never_ did it, some of them did it once a week, or more. A nice full spectrum of individuality that made her comfortable with being a member of her gender. But boys, boys were different. Even when they got to be men. Even when they got to be _old_ men.

No matter what their age, apparently, boys masturbated a _lot_.

There was no justification in getting mad about it, so Gwen learned to live with it, carefully ignoring every little disgusting detail. The way Ben'd take bathrooms breaks that were just a little longer than normal, and sure, he could've just had stomach trouble or something, but not _every_ time he did it! The way she'd sometimes touch his hands and they'd be very, very faintly sticky with the inadequately-cleaned residue of something she didn't want to think about. The way he sometimes monopolized the tissue boxes. The small stains that sometimes appeared on his clothes, that he always tried to unobtrusively clean up. Then when that failed, he put them into the machine at the cleaners himself instead of letting Grampa do it like usual. When the tissues ran out, napkins would go missing. And a pair of his socks, ones with small holes in them that Grampa had said he'd sew up, vanished into the void. Meh. Ben was a horny, immature little boy, who could expect him to behave properly?

But_Grampa_, now that had really given her a shock and left her with a difficult time getting to sleep for a week or so. It wasn't that he was as obvious (to her eyes, at least) as Ben. Quite the contrary, he was so circumspect that it took her a very long time to catch on. For all she knew, stealth masturbation was taught at Plumber school. The only real indication, the only serious proof she ever got was when she caught him slipping a picture or two into a (perfectly normal, g-rated) magazine a varying amount of time in advance, and then quietly taking the magazine with him when he eventually went to relieve himself. He did it very casually, but in a way so that she could only ever see glimpses through windows and doorways, accidental glances of his dirty little secret that he did such a good job hiding. It was only because they lived together in the summers, spending every day around each other, that she was able to catch him at all. She didn't know what was in most of the pictures, and didn't _want_ to know, but one time a photo of that alien lady friend of his fell out of a copy of the National Geographic she'd been reading, and Gwen had learned just a bit more about alien biology than she'd wanted to that day.

Gwen herself was a late bloomer. Sometimes she wondered if it was just because she'd hung around two guys every summer. Or maybe her distinct pride in following her head instead of her heart in day to day life had something to do with it. She didn't experiment until years after she'd been tolerating Ben's self-indulgences. And even then, her first time and for a long while afterwards, she only did it in her parents' house, with the shower running. Absolute privacy, the exact opposite of her summer vacations with Ben and Grampa. She enjoyed it, sure, but she couldn't understand why anyone would need to do it as much as she thought Ben did it sometimes, up to three times a _day_. That was just crazy, wasn't it? Like having cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Then it occurred to here that maybe _who_ you thought about made a difference in how often you wanted to do it. Was there someone Ben could be thinking about so much that it made him horny like seventy-five percent of the time?

And_that_ was a line of inquiry she banished from her mind _very_ quickly, driven by a mysterious unease she couldn't pin a motive on.


	11. Chapter 11

11. Adrenaline (Fantasy versus Reality Remix)

It had started with Ben wishing loudly for a ninja form on the Omnitrix. And why not? He had a mummy, a werewolf, a Frankstein's monster, a midget genius, a guy made out of crystal, a guy made out of _fire_... a ninja wouldn't have particularly stuck out in the lineup. That was where it had started, and from there it'd somehow progressed into a cinematic faux duel where Ben and his cousin were forced to rely upon every hazy memory of half-watched Japanese cartoons and black and white samurai flicks.

Ben was better at it than Gwen, which aggravated her to no end. Stupid dramatic poses, and speeches, and little spinny flip kick things. It would've been nice to've been Lucky Girl again for the event, but Ben wasn't going hero, so it was technically fair footing. Not her fault she hadn't spent most of her life watching tv.

Something stabbed into her foot as she ran around the back of the van to try and get to the higher ground, and she yelped. It was a crushed soda can, with the tab carefully turned straight up.

"Hahahah! You fell for my caltrop trap, you little fool, just as I knew you would!" Ben's voice wafted from behind some tree or building nearby, full of villainy gloating. He even managed to sound like a bad dubbing job, and if Gwen's foot hadn't hurt so much, she would've found it hilarious.

"It only hurts because you stole my shoes, you jerk!"

"You should guard your possessions more carefully... for that is not _all_ that I have taken from you, my child..."

"Yeah, I know. You took my sanity about a year ago," she grumbled, refusing to be further baited, though she wondered what else he could have grabbed as stakes. "If you damage my computer, Grampa will kill you, and then _I'll_ kill you, you know that, right?" she called out warningly, eyes scanning around for an annoying boy playing evil ninja who refused to materialize.

There was a significant pause. When Ben spoke next, she was able to pinpoint the rough direction of his voice, behind a certain set of trees. "Uh... of course I know that, I wouldn't do anything to your computer. Uh. Puny... gaijin..."

"Bennnnnn," she said with slow anger, grabbing a heavy-looking stick and hefting it menacingly.

But Ben had regained his bluster. "What would a mystical master of Mandarin mincing do with a worthless technological device? The power of technology is insignificant next to the might of my inner chi!"

Wait. She was going about this the wrong way. The thing to do was to keep in character and appeal to his very real ego. Raise the stakes and he wouldn't be able to resist. He never could.

"I think you're bluffing, Mandarin mincer," she practically purred, her voice carefully calculated to mock and enrage. "I think you _did_ steal my computer. For the same reason you've been throwing cardboard throwing stars at me... and setting up soda can caltrops... and dropping water balloons." She didn't know if he could see her or not, but just in case, she wagged her finger in the air tauntingly. "Because you're afraid to face me in open combat!"

"Foul and dishonorable lies! Stealth and trickery is the ninja way!" Ben thundered, and she knew exactly where he was now. Playtime and real emotions were merging to her benefit. A straightforward dramatic conflict would come next, and he'd be mad. He'd be even madder after she finished kicking his butt for touching her computer.

She faced towards him, a smirk on her lips. Back straight as a rod, expression ever so slightly challenging. "Oh, but it's true, isn't it? I'm twice the man you are, and you know it." And things were blurring a bit for _her_, too... she couldn't help but envy him the Omnitrix, which he used so often to pull annoying physical pranks that couldn't be countered by direct force. No, she'd had to survive on her wits. But the Omnitrix was out of bounds now, totally incorrect for the genre. She was gonna whup him good, and then maybe he'd be a little more respectful!

He emerged from his hiding place with a surprisingly cheery smirk on his face. Amongst the other things he'd scavenged, he'd gotten a blanket and wrapped it around himself. It would've looked almost snazzy if it hadn't been dragging twigs and dead leaves along with it with every step he took.

"Hm, now that I think about it, yeah, maybe you _are_ twice the man I am," he replied unexpectedly. The smirk turned into a wicked grin. "'Cause you've got hair on your upper lip. And your tits are like, concave."

It actually took her a second to get over her surprise at him knowing a word like 'concave' and process the sentence, resulting in the appropriate amount of rage. It didn't help that she hadn't really developed in the chest area yet, so his comment held a grain of truth to it.

"Benjamin Tennyson, I am going to _kill_ you for that," she growled, stalking towards him with the stick held high.

"Hahahah! If you strike me down, I shall become greater than you can ever imagine!" He whipped out a floppier branch he'd been hiding behind his back. The doofus had just stripped a live branch off some unfortunate tree, instead of getting a nice, hard dead one like hers. She was gonna beat him like a rug, and grinned in anticipation of a proper glorious victory.

Branches crossed, swished, and clacked amid, in her mind, dramatic storms of crashing blue lightning and falling cherry blossoms. And to her absolute delight, she _was_ whipping his butt! Little boy wasn't so tough without his alien bodies. He was a little stronger than her, but his stupidity weapon choice negated that advantage of his nicely. And she was a lot faster and better-coordinated. His energetic but clumsy efforts were almost laughable, and for every negligible lash that landed on some part of her, she poked and smacked and wacked him ten times.

They crossed branches again and deliberately let it linger, pushing weapon against weapon and glaring at each other, sweaty faces aglow with cruel delight (on her part) and frustration (on his. "Come on, mister ninja, is that all you got?"

"Ah, she may have all the passion of fire her hair's colored as, but courage and looks alone are not enough to withstand the master of the seventh hidden double-foot technique!"

Gwen gave him a weird look. "Okay, if that was supposed to make up for the chest comment or something, not a chance. I'm still beating you down for that."

"Naw, I just wanted to give you a fair chance to run away before I did _this_!" And then he jumped on both her feet with his, stomping hard. Considering she was in socks and he still had sneakers on, it freaking _hurt_.

"Ow! You little jerk, I'm gonna-" she started, then cut herself off with a panicked squeak as he tried it again. She managed to dodge that time, and started hitting him with her branch even harder than before in revenge.

It'd still been fairly playful, up until then, but once significant physical pain got involved, things got... uncivilized. It just got angrier and angrier, and eventually things devolved into them basically bashing each other mindlessly, with assorted kicks, hair-pullings, headbutts, and wrestling holds tossed in at random whenever survival seemed to dictate such. The accumulating collections of bruises and minor bloodloss were ignored in the heat of the moment.

Then a particularly nasty thwock on the back of her head left her ears ringing and her eyes watering. She yelled in pain, but it was so close to the angry warcries they'd been tossing back and forth already that Ben didn't seem to notice. After all her mockery, now that he'd finally got the upper hand, he wasn't showing any mercy, and she got to learn that while a flexible green branch may not make a good club, it works rather well as a whiplash. The little knobs and smaller branches on it only increased the stinging sensation. Unable to think clearly, Gwen pushed blindly, then stumbled a few steps before setting into a run for the safety of the van.

Ben's hooting jeering followed. "Givin' up so soon?! What happened to all that more of a man than me stuff, huh?! By the way, I painted your computer pink!" When she darted inside and slammed the door shut, retreating to her bunk, he seemed to get that the game was over, and hadn't ended well, even if he _had_ won. "Gwen?! Gwen! Come on, don't be a sore loser! I didn't hit you any harder than you were hitting me!"

And that part was true, and Gwen _hated_ it that she hadn't been made of tougher stuff, but she ached and stung all over, and she couldn't stop crying into her pillow. Very quiet tears that she tried to stop from leaking out every few seconds, but they wouldn't stop, and it was totally humiliating. For the first time since she'd known Ben, she felt like her gender actually made some kind of a difference in how they interacted with each other. And not a good one. An incredibly insane part of her mind wished, for just that one moment only, that she'd been born a boy.

That was when Grampa came back from shopping, arms full of exotic and disgusting culinary goods. She got to hear Ben being interrogated with increasing firmness before Grampa came in and talked to her, just a little more gently. He patted her back, smeared some oily medical junk on her reddened skin, and told her with utmost seriousness that if she and her cousin ever did anything like that again, he would turn them over on his knee and spank them both until they couldn't sit down for a week, no matter _how_ old they happened to be. She believed him.


	12. Chapter 12

12. A Cry in the Dark

"_Gwendolyn... I'm waiting, little girl... the void has secrets yet untapped to share with you..."_

_Cold, paralyzing cold, floating in nothing. There were stars, but so far away they were pinpoints of light, nothing to help her freezing body. No up, no down. Just the inky blackness. How long would she wait for the wretched girl to answer her call? They both knew it was the only thing she could do, the only viable course of action, so why was she ignoring her?! The void held no life, no entertainments, no distractions. There was only waiting. And anticipation of the waiting coming to an end._

Gwen awoke with a jerk, bumping her head on a nearby lamp and mumbling a mild curse. The fourth dream in as many attempts to get to sleep. She was _never_ going to get any rest at this rate. And she _had_ to sleep, she had an important exam this week!

Her learning in arcane lore was at a precariously vulnerable stage. She had learned enough to open her mind to telepathic contact, to hear things that went unheard by others, but not enough to close the door again and get back to being the only person in her skull. That wouldn't have ordinarily been worrisome. But there was an unusual circumstance she never could have suspected.

Ghostfreak was still alive.

Somehow, some way, a tiny part of his consciousness lingered on in space, unsnuffed by the sun's rays. She had to hand it to the creep, what he lacked in morals or looks he made up for in survival skills. An incredibly weak tendril of telepathic ability remained, enough to contact only someone sensitive to such things. Who knew how long he'd been trying before she finally opened up her mind, unsuspecting of the danger. For three days now, she'd endured the nightmares whenever she closed her eyes. Three days of hearing his thoughts, dreaming she _was_ him, having their memories swirl together hazily. Three days of seeing things through his eyes, remembering things through his mind, that she didn't want to see or remember. Three days of having him remark tauntingly on _her_ memories.

It was the latter that was most disturbing. Certain... suggestions... he made regarding herself and her cousin were totally out of line, even for an utterly wicked monster.

Even more horrible was that she couldn't stop herself from almost _believing_ him, a little bit. He was trying to manipulate her, convince her to resurrect him, since it was apparent at this point that only someone with her expertise in magic had the ability to do so. It was blatant, but then, he never tried to hide it from her in the first place. How _could_ he? Their minds halfway melted together whenever they made contact, fire and ice transmuting into steam. Bribes of ancient mystic lore, known only to his people, were a common subject. Slightly less common and more vague, but more terrible to hear, were the hints that she _had_ to revive him, because she and Ben _needed_ villains to fight.

There had been a distinct lack of foes to smack down lately, for both her cousin and herself. Dr. Animo was actually staying in jail for a change, apparently trying out that 'good behavior' thing that was supposedly all the rage. The last she'd heard of Vilgax, he'd decided to try enslaving the Galvans to make a second Omnitrix instead of trying to take Ben's. Kevin, uncharacteristically, had been reluctant to fight of late. Hex and Charmcaster were too involved trying to backstab and manipulate each other to be much harm to the general populace. The Forever Knights had been beaten down enough that they were acting very cowed.

So, that had incidentally left Ben and Gwen with a lot of free time to hang around more, just being normal. Except Gwen had found that normal, when that was all there was to do, was starting to be... awkward. Maybe it was just because she hadn't truly lived as an ordinary person in so long, but she was nervous, and there were only so many excuses she could use to avoid him before he figured out she was avoiding him. He'd been giving her more odd looks, had more instances of starting to say things and then stopping in the middle. With no one to fight, Ben had a lot more time to _think_. And while she did her best not to guess at what thoughts he could be thinking, and _certainly_ never violated his privacy by poking into his mind, she couldn't help but feel that if this went on long enough, for a few months or years, something would burst in him. And things that people normally kept quiet about, the little secrets they buried gently in time, would come flooding over everything. She was worried that he'd end up saying something he'd regret later. Something she'd want unheard the moment she heard it.

It was just a feeling, but it didn't go away.

And Ghostfreak had latched onto that like a lamprey to a shark's belly, using it for his own ends. If there was an active villain to contend with again, life would go back to the _real_ normal... what normal had been for her and Ben ever since the alien watch had curled around his wrist. The kind of normal that was entertainingly abnormal, the adventures and death-defying situations that gave such sweet contrast to the more relaxed moments. In a way, Ghostfreak would be a blessing, not a bane. It would be _great_ to have someone to fight again, and not just for the sake of banishing the uncomfortable premonition she'd been having of non-superhero life. Ben had been missing the action too. Neither of them really _wanted_ to stop playing hero, but to be a hero you had to have someone to fight.

So, in a selfish kind of way, Ghostfreak was absolutely right. Regardless of the evils he would or could cause upon reforming his body fully, he would definitely give them the kind of adrenaline they'd been missing lately. And that would, in turn, wash away the excess of peace that allowed the two vacationing heroes to ponder more than should have been pondered. Nothing but good for everyone involved, except the innocent bystanders Ghostfreak'd probably be hurting whenever it suited his purposes.

She'd misjudged Ben before. Not often, but sometimes. It could all be in her head. It probably _was_. After all, it was hard getting used to being an ordinary person again, and all the thinking time made her overthink things. But there was a chance that it wasn't.

The excitement was missed, but that wasn't enough to make her seriously consider Ghostfreak's request. The other matter, though...

Was she really willing to help one of the worst enemies they'd ever faced come back to life just so she could avoid the risk of Ben _maybe_ saying things she wanted to keep unsaid?

After a long moment, her head slipped down on her desk with a dull thump. She stared at the dark wood with aching, bloodshot eyes.

Well, shit.

Some questions you didn't really want the answers to.


	13. Chapter 13

13. The Line (Silence is the Enemy Remix)

She'd crossed the line.

Gwen hadn't even been aware that there WAS a line, but apparently there was, and apparently she'd crossed it, because Ben hadn't spoken to her in three whole days now.

At first she counted her blessings. Free to study, free to relax, free to enjoy herself without that little boogerhead getting in the way, teasing her, pulling pranks, or just being a general nuisance. It was like vacationing with just Grampa, and it was awesome. Grampa himself noticed the change, of course, but elected to keep a watchful silence on the matter, apparently figuring that they'd resolve it themselves. Gwen hadn't wanted it resolved. Not initially, anyway. They'd never had any conversational boundaries before, never had reason to hold their tongues, and she wasn't gonna change that just because she'd won a major victory. She counted it as a victory because Ben didn't want to confront her on it, and it made him angry. To her, that meant that whatever she'd said to piss him off so much had been perfectly true and that he wasn't ready to admit it to himself yet. She didn't even care that she couldn't remember exactly what she'd said to him to start it all in the first place! It didn't matter.

The second day, when his every movement dripped with a sullen attitude and he didn't so much move things as throw them, she still didn't care.

The third day, when his eyes tried to pierce her like spears when he thought she wasn't looking, she laughed it off and deliberately acted even more cheerful than usual. She hummed tunes, listened to her music loud, and practically skipped instead of walking.

The fourth day, Grampa gently suggested that maybe she should have a little chat with Ben. The kid's superheroing was getting a little sloppy, but that wasn't _her_ fault, was it? No, but maybe she should have a talk with him anyway, just to see what was the matter? Psh. What did she _care_ what was the matter with Ben? If he didn't _want_ to talk about it, why should she _make_ him?

The fifth day, the silence had turned as oppressive as the heat of the African plains. Even Grampa started getting affected by it, and he kept shooting her looks, as if she was supposed to do something she wasn't doing. It bugged her. She hadn't done anything wrong, but he was trying to make her feel guilty. Grampa almost never tried to pull that kind of emotional blackmail on them no matter what they did, but he was pulling it now.

The sixth day, Gwen gave up. And it wasn't because she felt bad or anything! There wasn't anything to feel bad about. She was just tired of Ben being so stubborn and immature like he always was. But she could pretend she was sorry, a little bit, if it helped get things back to normal. Her debating skills were getting rusty with no one worth disagreeing with. Grampa hardly counted, he was always right whenever he bothered expressing an opinion. It wasn't because she missed talking to him or anything. Little twerp.

It seemed to go okay, right up until he got that she didn't know exactly _why_ he'd been mad at her. He stared with eyes wide in disbelief.

"You don't even remember what you said?" Behind the incredulity there was a kind of wounded feeling that she tried to pretend didn't exist, but it _did_, and it made her feel bad. Hurting Ben's feelings wasn't a part of their routine. She usually went through life assuming he barely had feelings to start with, and circumstances generally seemed to support her on that.

Pained disbelief turned into anger, the yelling kind rather than the sulking kind he'd been indulging in for the past week. It almost scared her, almost made her feel like she'd been the one to really do something wrong. But she hadn't said anything _that_ bad, had she? How _could_ it have been bad if she couldn't even remember it?

"How could you just say that and not even remember! I can't believe you!"

"Look, Ben, I'm sorry," Gwen babbled mindlessly, bewildered, with no idea how to deal with the situation. "Whatever it was, if it was that important to you, I take it back, okay?"

He stopped glaring at her and lavished optical hate on the ground instead. "No. No, I'm not gonna let you take it back. You said it. You meant it. You don't get to take it back if you don't remember what it was in the first place."

This was _beyond_ frustrating. "Jeez, Ben, I don't know what you want! What else can I say to get you to stop being mad at me?!"

"Nothing." His voice was so low it was barely understandable, his eyes slit, his posture hunched gargoyle-like. "Forget about it."

She instinctively knew that wasn't really what he wanted, but she didn't know what else to say or do, so she left it at that. "Alright. I'm sorry, again. I'll see you at dinner, okay?"

He didn't look up. "'Kay."

Over the course of the following week, things gradually melted back into their regular interactions, as Ben let himself soften bit by bit, and forget whatever offense she'd caused. Or just pretended to forget. For a couple months afterwards, she caught him looking at her resentfully behind her back. Or maybe she was just imagining it, the vague sense of guilt she carried around from the incident helping out her imagination. She never did find out what she'd said to make him act like he did, but every once in a while, even years later, she wondered, and wondered if he still thought about it too.


	14. Chapter 14

14. Razor in a Haystack

When she caught Ben cutting himself in the gas station bathroom, she nearly beat the crap out of him then and there. The only thing stopping her was the annoyingly unworkaroundable fact that it was the _men's_ bathroom, after all. Well, that and it was so unspeakably gross that she didn't want to set foot in there... even just poking her head in to tell him to hurry up had left her eyes watering from the smell. That didn't keep her from yelling at him, though. He dropped the shiny bit of metal he'd been cutting himself with, pulled his sleeve back down, and practically pounced on her to cover her mouth.

"Shut up before someone hears you, zitface!" he hissed in a desperate, harsh whisper. She tried to yell through his hand. He clenched her mouth tighter. She bit him, which got him to let go with a yelp.

"Okay, Sir Dorksalot, just _what_ do you think you were doing in there?!" she snapped at a volume below a yell, but only just barely. She knew what he'd been doing, and he knew she knew, but guilt-confirming interrogations had certain rules to be followed.

"Nothing!"

"Oh, _nothing_, okay, my fault. For a sec there I thought you were cutting up your own arm and watching the blood drip down it but I guess I was mistaken."

"Well you keep it down? I don't want Grampa to hear!"

"Oh, I _bet_ you don't." Gwen closed in on him and he backed away nervously, but not fast enough to keep her from grabbing his sleeve and tugging it up to expose his new hobby's nasty results. She surveyed the cuts, fresh and scabbed and scarred, with disgust. "These weren't all done at the same time, Ben! Jeez! How long've you been doing this crap?!"

"Leave me alone!" He tried to stalk off, but she had no intentions of letting him walk away from her _that_ easy.

"Benjamin Tennyson, I'm telling Grampa!"

He froze, then whipped around so fast he might as well have been XLR8, suddenly clinging to her like a drowning sailor to a raft. "No! Don't! Please!"

"Why shouldn't I?" The best thing to do would be to, of course, do what she'd said and tell on him. But she wondered what he'd try to bribe her with.

"I'll do anything. I swear. I'll do anything you want. Gwen, _please_." The level of fearful sincerity in Ben's voice was so intense that even she was moved by it, entirely unwillingly.

And then, speak of the Devil...

"Hey, kids, anything the matter? You guys were getting pretty loud."

Ben was paralyzed, eyes locked onto her in silent pleading. She only took a second to make up her mind.

"Nothing's wrong Grampa." She smirked. "Ben just fell in the toilet as Gray Matter again, that's all."

"You are such a liar," Ben growled, but much more subdued than he normal, cheeks red.

Grampa chuckled lightly, his reaction giving no clue as to whether he believed it or not. "Okay then. I just need to get a couple more things and then we can get back on the road." He turned away, took a step, then turned back. "Oh, and have either of you seen any of my razorblades floating around? The darn things keep falling out of the case and I'm missing like three of them now."

Gwen's eyes shifted silently to Ben, who was standing so incredibly still and looking so incredibly innocent that it was hugely suspicious.

"I haven't seen them," she said easily.

"Me neither," Ben said right after.

"Okay then. Just wear your shoes in the van till I find them, I don't want you guys stepping on them or anything." Grampa drifted off to finish his Grampa business. Funnily enough, Ben looked almost as scared and cornered alone with her as he had been with her and Grampa.

"You. Me. Back in the van. Big meaningful talk. Now," she announced promptly. Ben, totally meek for once, followed her without objections.

They sat across from each other on their bunks, Indian style. Ben looked like he wanted to sink into the wall, which only made Gwen more confident in the effectiveness of her 'judge, jury, and executioner' expression.

"How long?"

His eyes avoided hers. "I dunno, maybe, like, a year or something?"

She took a slightly deeper breath. Now came the hard part. "Okay. What did we do wrong?" she asked absolutely blankly.

"Wha?"

"Don't play stupid!" she snapped. "What did Grampa and me do wrong to make you want to do something so stupid and horrible to yourself?!"

The barking laugh that emerged from his lips was nearly animalistic, and some of his old playfulness came back. "Jeez, Gwen! It's not like that! I don't do it 'cause of anything you guys do. You guys're great." Gwen blinked in surprise at the unexpected compliment, but he went on too quick for her to react to it. "I do it because of me, okay? It doesn't have anything to do with you or Grampa."

"What do you mean, because of you? Do I need to hassle you harder so you don't hassle yourself or something?"

"Hah, no way. Look... it's just..." he slowed down, floundering, looking everywhere but at her. She waited patiently, knowing he'd get to it if she didn't push too hard. "I dunno. Sometimes when I'd lose fights, and there weren't any rematches real soon, I got pissed about it. I get mad at the guys I lose to, but when I can't get them back, I get mad at myself, so yeah."

"So instead of hurting them, you hurt yourself?" she asked carefully, making sure she had it right.

"Yeah, I guess."

"That's so freaking _stupid_!"

"Stop yelling at me," Ben growled lowly. "You've never done it so you don't know what it's like anyway."

"So what? Why would I _want_ to know what it's like? Unlike _some_ people, I'm smart enough to know I don't like _pain_!"

"Well, I guess I just like being dumb, then!"

She wished she could roll her eyes fully three-sixty degrees. "Oh, yeah, like we didn't know _that_ before."

"Are you gonna tell Grampa?"

"I guess not. If you don't do it anymore, ever."

"Screw you, I'm not gonna do whatever you tell me to just 'cause you can blackmail me!" he yelled, anger overcoming self-preservation.

"Well, I'm not gonna let you practice being suicidal or whatever when you've got people who care about you and want you to be happy!" she yelled right back.

"You don't know anything! I don't wanna die. I just do it 'cause it makes me feel better. But I guess you'll _never_ understand."

"I guess not," Gwen agreed, matching his hard stare with one of her own.

That was pretty much the end of the conversation. She _should_ have told Grampa. But she didn't. Somehow Ben had managed to conjure up a rare strain of sympathy in her. She didn't tell, but she talked very loudly to Grampa about how she didn't know _where_ those missing razorblades could be, and kept a really close eye on Ben, and gave him meaningful looks whenever he went to the bathroom. With any luck, she hoped she was making him guilty enough that he wouldn't do any of that stupid crap anymore.

So that was how things went for a few more weeks, and there was enough alien fighting to keep her mind off of things anyway. But in the back of her head, there was a little niggling doubt that wouldn't go away, an itch that demanded to be scratched. Gwen Tennyson was an inquisitive person by nature. She _hated_ not knowing things.

And she really _didn't_ know what it felt like to hurt yourself deliberately.

It hadn't been too hard to figure out where Ben had been hiding the razorblades. They were in the same place he kept his tiny porn magazine collection she pretended not to know about. Against her better judgement, one evening, she waited till Ben and Grampa were gone and slipped out one of the razorblades. It _looked_ clean... but then, they _all_ did. How did she know which ones had been used and which ones hadn't? Maybe he threw them away after he used them once. Although that'd be kind of wasteful, but it was just the kind of thing she'd expect Ben to do. Oh well. Consideirng what she was gonna do with it, getting squeamish over whether or not it'd been used before was pretty dumb.

The incriminating strip of shiny metal was slipped into a pocket, and the next time they had a bathroom break, Gwen had a secret objective to complete. She wasn't gonna go overboard or anything, not like that dweeb Ben. Just one cut. Just to see what it felt like. To prove he was being stupid about the whole thing, to put her mind to rest. Then he'd have no excuses.

Getting the metal out of the little plastic casing was a lot harder than she thought it would've been. Annoyingly, she actually cut herself on the tip of her thumb getting the metal out. It hurt, like any other cut she'd ever gotten. It didn't count, she decided. Accidental cuts wouldn't prove anything.

Okay. Okay, she could do this. No reason to be scared or anything. Girls everywhere did it, it was practically the official girl hobby of the information age... and she _had_ to mention that to Ben, the next time she talked to him, heh. Just one little cut. If Ben could do it, _she_ definitely could!

Her first attempt was so tentative that it was a positive embarrassment. A tiny little scratch with just the very corner, that didn't even break the skin in a full line. Barely any blood even visible, not even worth dabbing at. Gritting her teeth in anger at her cowardice, she tried again, and this time it was a shallow, clean cut, a cut that actually hurt when she made it. Sharp but brief pain that quickly faded into a dull ache. She stared at the blood as it welled up, waiting to feel something different, something exciting. Nothing happened. Okay, so she was happy that she'd proved she could do it, the kind of satisfaction she got once she beat a challenging puzzle, but that was _all_. What was the big attraction for Ben? Guess she'd never know. Gwen blotted up the cut with some of the annoyingly thin toilet paper that was the only kind of toilet paper public restrooms ever had, covered her sleeve over it carefully, and left the building. Disappointing? No, not really. She'd just proved she was right about the whole thing. And she _was_. And Ben was being stupid. Just like always.

But Ben noticed the razor was gone before she had a chance to sneak it back. She wanted to lie and say she'd thrown it out, but then, there were the other razorblades so that wasn't a good excuse. So she ended up confessing. To her total confusion, _he_ started getting angry and yelling at _her_!

"Who's the dummy now, Gwen?! Gimme the razor back, you're smarter than me so why don't you act like it?!"

"Why are you yelling at me for doing the same thing you're doing?!" she yelled right back. "I only did it once to see what it was like, anyway! And it's stupid!"

"Well, you _knew_ that already, so why'd you have to go and _do_ it?!"

"I don't know, I just did!"

"I don't want you hurting yourself," he said suddenly in such a serious tone that it left her shocked. The look on his face was so... _adult_. It was totally unlike him.

"Well, I don't want you hurting yourself either."

"Why not? You seem t'like hurting me when you get the chance." And then, just like that, back to a kid again, sneering and mocking.

"That's different. I don't make you _bleed_, dorkface." She repressed the urge to turn it into another one of their arguments. This was too important to let that happen. "Anyway. We've established that neither of us like it when we hurt ourselves, right?"

"I guess so."

"So, if I promise not to do it, will you promise not to do it?"

"You weren't gonna do it anymore anyway," he muttered sulkily, trying to weasel out of what seemed like, to her, a perfectly reasonable and fair solution. The only solution she could think of was a bluff.

"Well, I might do it more if you do it more. So there."

"No you wouldn't!"

"We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?"

In a whirlwind of abrupt motion, Ben snatched out one of his other razorblades, yanked up her sleeve, and held the metal against her skin so she could feel the faint coldness of the steel.

"You'd drag this over your skin again?" he asked, once more the serious, adult Ben she hadn't known even existed before now, his gaze so intense it almost hurt to not look away. "You'd cut yourself with this, even though you don't like it, just to piss me off? You'd do that to yourself? You're such a _hypocrite_!" He raked the blade over her skin, a short, sharp cut that left had her crying out and recoiling in shock, clutching herself. It was a tiny cut but that wasn't the _point_, _Ben_ had done that to her, _that_ was what made it so scary! Instead of letting her back away, he pushed closer, forcing her to retreat more until there was nowhere left to retreat to. "Yeah, did that feel good?!" he yelled in her face. "Huh?! It _didn't_, did it?! So don't _do_ it! Not ever again! You're not me, so stop trying to _be_ me!"

"And what makes _you_ so different?!" she snarled, grabbing the razor out of his hand, relishing the startled, scared expression on his face as she raked the metal over the top of his hand once, twice, and a third time for good freaking measure. "Did that feel good to _you_, moron?! Are your pain receptors wired different from every other human being on the planet?!" She swore, which got an even bigger freaked out look from Ben, and threw the razor away, not caring where it went.

They panted, sweated, and stared at each other. Gwen was very aware of how close together they were, and how warm his body was. And how they both had the same tight, tense, angry-scared-protective-hateful-loving expressions on their faces. She got the feeling that they had, somehow, done something really wonderful or really terrible without realizing it.

"Okay," Ben said finally. "Okay. Let's never do that again. And I promise I won't do it anymore if you won't do it anymore."

Gwen swallowed a lump in her throat. "Okay." Her voice was creaky, barely over a whisper. She desperately hoped she wasn't going to cry, that would've been just the _perfect_ ending to the conversation. Her hope was in vain, but Ben was learning how to hug without being an idiot about it, so it wasn't too bad.

The day after, Ben announced to Grampa that he'd 'found' the razorblades in a little corner they'd fallen into. As far as Gwen knew, Ben never tried to cut again. And she never did either. And as with many things between them, they never talked about it again.


	15. Chapter 15

15. The Shallow End of the Pool

Some people vented frustration by smashing up punching bags. Gwen Tennyson went to the local junkyard and blew things up. As much as she would've died of shame for some of her ritzier fellow students to have found out about it, there were practical reasons for a garbage dump being her locale of choice for temper tantrums.

At first, she'd come to it as a sort of alternative reagent store, a place to rummage for obscure spell ingredients that were easier to scavenge than buy. But while doing this 'shopping' in a particularly bad mood one day, the other potential uses of the site came to her. The stench kept everyone away, she was relatively free to use her magic as openly as she wanted. The problem of being seen working magic, and thus connected to Ben Tennyson's many alien forms, and then inevitably to Ben Tennyson himself and screwing over both their secret identities, was a nonproblem when there was no one within a mile to see you.

And so today she was utilizing that to her advantage, and blowing the crap out of trash. Mostly discarded cars and other machines, things that made very satisfying sounds when they exploded. The shards of metal that whizzed by her so many times would have made her stop in ordinary circumstances, but these weren't ordinary circumstances, and she was too pissed to care if she was putting herself in potentially mortal danger or not.

Damn Jonathan.

Fruity little _bastard_.

She tossed blue lightning at a tv, and relished the sound and sight of its monitors shattering into a million tiny pieces.

It had been so _obvious_, in retrospect. How could she have not seen it? She'd gone straight for the most delicate, understanding, emotionally sensitive guy in the whole college, and he'd had great hair to boot! Such a relief to find out he wasn't gay, but gay would have been easier to deal with. It would have ruled him out altogether, instead of what had happened, what he'd let happen, which was wrap her up in affection and let her get all attached and then drop this damn bombshell on her.

Just one more secret, and how she loathed that word as much as Vilgax or Ghostfreak.

Jonathan had been more than happy to feel her up, when the mood was right, but whenever she returned the favor, instant awkweird. And there'd been the intense interest in her clothing, he always commented on her clothes whenever they went out. He was so gentle, and wise, and analytical, and cool-headed, and in touch with his feelings, and wow, she really should have seen what was coming and gotten the heck out of Dodge before he'd given her that stupid hundred dollar bracelet. Now she'd never be able to wear the bloody thing without feeling guilty.

But it was his fault, really! Jonathan had no one to blame but himself for how things turned out. How could he have possibly expected her to react to knowing he wanted to be a _woman_, with boobs and a lack of dangly bits and everything, after they'd spent a year and a half together and he _knew_ she didn't like women?

More lightning, flung with careless lack of aim, blasted trash until nothing was left to blast, and then scorched the dirt. She had no right to be mad. He was just trying to become happy, just like everyone else. And there wasn't anything morally _wrong_ with getting a sex change operation, was there? So the concept disturbed her, it disturbed _most_ people, a bit, that didn't mean it was wrong as such. But he damn well should have told her sooner. And there was a significant part of her that was very, very bitter that he prioritized the operation above a relationship with her in his life goals list. Ben would have never-

Her mind froze, like an insect caught in amber.

Very, very carefully, she unravelled whatever thought she'd been about to think, and did a little rewind. Ben had nothing to do with anything. Sure, they hadn't talked for weeks, and the last time they had it'd been short because she'd wanted to go to a movie with Jonathan, but romances and education monopolized time, that was just how they _were_, and her cousin understood, he always did. She'd make it up to him with an extra nice birthday present or something, maybe get him one of those huge video game box sets he was always drooling over. It was amazing how little the years had changed his hobbies, they were basically the same since he'd been ten years old. So immature. Not at all like any of the people she hung out with normally. It took the shared experiences of summer vacations and superhero work to forge a bond between her and Ben; with people that had more in common with her, all it took was a good conversation or two.

Still, it would've been nice to really share everything she knew about magic, and aliens, and the Omnitrix with some of her friends, with her parents. Maybe then she wouldn't be left feeling so alone in circumstances like this, repressing the urge to call up Grampa or Ben, neither of whom would really understand what she was going through due to gender, age, and personality-related mental barriers. She couldn't spill the beans yet, not until Ben said it was okay, when he was ready to handle all the public attention. He had to deal with it eventually if he wanted to be Ben 10,000. But then, maybe his plan was to avoid that scenario entirely by cutting off one of the basic prerequisites. Or maybe he was just too lazy to bother with it all, which seemed more likely.

She thought of how nice it would be to slip into one of their playful arguments and let the feeling of mock-hateful aggression envelope her, the one place in life where she always had the upper hand, where she could _always_ win, because Ben was... well, not _stupid_ (although even as few as two years ago she would have opined differently), but very much inclined to live for the moment without bothering to think it through. He was like a pet, in a way, an essentially animal creature. And while she sometimes, if less and less in recent years, resented him, it was always for practical, easily-dissected reasons, like how he sometimes went for more than a week without washing his hair. He almost never made her feel guilty, like she was in the wrong for getting annoyed at him, and that made annoyance a strangely comfortable feeling almost equivalent to happiness. It was a lot more soothing than the intellectual debates she had with her friends, which somehow always devolved into the kind of frustrated anger that was entirely unpleasant. She couldn't ever convince them of _anything_... but then, they couldn't convince _her_ of anything, either. And it was definitely different from Jonathan, who knew how to make her feel bad without saying a word, without her even knowing why she was feeling bad in the first place. He didn't always mean to do it, didn't always _know_ he was doing it, but he did it anyway. Just like her friends didn't mean for debates to turn into genuine arguments. She understood and didn't get bitter over it. It was probably mostly her fault anyway.

But none of that really helped out the immediate moment. Jonathan had still dumped her, dumped her because she wasn't mature enough, or whatever, to handle his life goals. Gwen had promised herself she wouldn't cry for the sake of her self-respect, and anyway, the situation was so ludicrous that crying would have been practically farcical. But she found that it wasn't nearly as hard as she would have thought to keep those tears back. There was a lot of anger and frustration boiling over inside her, appearing as if out of nowhere, and she took it out duly on inanimate objects, but there wasn't so much actual grief. Maybe she was finally getting used to this breakup thing. Or maybe she was just saving it all up for later when she could weep on a friendly shoulder. Not Ben's. Definitely not Ben's, he would have just made fun of her. It was too juicy a topic for him to resist. Probably. He'd surprised her sometimes in being able to take things seriously, but she wasn't planning on risking it this time, not when she could talk to her mother or Grampa or Jenny or Alison. Grampa would be a great choice, especially if she left out the particulars of the breakup. _Our lives were just going in different directions_, she'd say, or something like that.

Analyzing things rationally, life would just go back to being ordinary again, except with some nicer jewelry in her collection, and some minor additions to her practical knowledge of human anatomy. Gwen had really hoped that Jonathan would be 'the one,' but he wasn't, so screw him. Any ideal romance would put the happiness of the partner above the self, wouldn't it? So he was just being a selfish prick. Heh. What an inappropriate insult to use, considering the circumstances. Gwen felt as though she'd blown up enough of the junkyard for today. There were tests to study for, projects to work on, spells to research, friends to socialize with. Life had to be lived. And besides, if her life ever felt a little too full of brooding thoughts, there was always Ben to verbally joust with and help her lose herself in the moment. Ben, who was the exact opposite of sensitive, who never thought ahead more than it took him to plan a prank, who had barely come to terms with women being actual regular people instead of bizarre alien life forms. Ben, who seemed to make a hobby out of using his superpowers to indulge in minor selfish whims. But whenever it came down to the life-changing events, he always through himself in the line of fire, right in front of her, or Grampa, or any innocent bystanders. It was remarkable, really, how he managed to combine the cheapest, lowest most direct form of selfishness possible with an intense willingness to do anything to help people out with serious things. Almost barbaric, in a way. Very, very uncivilized. And she'd come to realize that she liked it that way.

Completely on impulse, she called him up on her cellphone and proceeded to enter into an argument about whether or not liking women after a sex change operation into one made you gay or not. It was wonderful to have someone to yell at who not only didn't take offense, but yelled right back without missing a beat. The fact that she was doing something she'd resolved to _not_ do barely a minute prior to the call didn't seem to matter. Unwanted 'deep' thoughts melted away like snow in a summer heat under the onslaught of shallow emotional reactions, and that was that.


	16. Chapter 16

16. And in Other News

Gwen watched idly as her friend Jenny surfed through channels, feeling a little bored, but not bored enough to try something desperately pathetic, like a board game.

Golf.

Medieval jousting re-enactment.

Gangster movie.

Spongebob Squarepants; the channel got changed _very_ quickly that time.

Cowboy movie.

Black urban music video with skanks and bling.

Chimpanzees with British voice narration.

Spanish romance movie with subpar subtitles.

Golf again.

"Golf on _two_ channels?" Jenny whined. "C'mon, the first one was more than _I_ ever wanted!"

"There's some big tournament on today," Gwen explained listlessly.

Home decorating.

Reality show with unusually pretty girls arguing over some unusually pretty boy.

Some stupid Japanese cartoon.

Some stupider American cartoon.

Disney movie with talking animals.

Action movie with bodies exploding. Gross.

"_And in other news,_" a newscaster announced with his flawlessly unaccented newscaster voice, "_recent evidence has emerged to pin the recent string of murders in Kyoto, Japan on the elusive criminal popularly known as Ghostfreak. Although the Japanese police have not yet released full details, multiple witnesses have-_"

The channel changed again, but Gwen's mind didn't switch with the television set this time. Nothing being on tv didn't really concern her anymore. Her expression didn't change one bit, but now everything was black and cold in her head, like the void of space that monster had so recently been imprisoned in.

The channels kept on changing. When Jenny asked her something or made a comment obviously expecting a reply, Gwen replied. As far as the outer world was concerned, Gwen Tennyson was just the same as always. But inside her own head, she was screaming, and screaming, and screaming.


	17. Chapter 17

17. Fool Me Twice

"See, wasn't it all worth it in the end?" Charmcaster said with a kind of purring satisfaction. "Your cousin's dramatically less annoying and more competent. Your grandfather's happy to take you anywhere you want, and isn't forcing bizarre foreign cousin down your throat. Both of them trust you more and like you more now. You can actually have quite lovely three way conversations with them, and enjoy it. I know you had your doubts about my offer, my tutelage... but don't the results speak for themselves? With just a little more time, we can even make the effects permanent, and then put our energies towards spells that'll _really_ change the world. Working together, with that wand, nothing is out of our grasp!"

Gwen remained stonily silent, fingering the wand that had made all of it possible moodily. Charmcaster's speech had been nice, a very dramatic and triumphant way to end the 'lesson,' but she had eyes only for the relatives who'd been unwitting pawns in the educational process. No better than dissected frogs on a table, Grampa and Ben were washing the van. Talking, laughing, having fun with it, getting along better than they ever did when they were themselves. And of course they didn't see her or Charmcaster. Tweak the senses, tweak the mind, cut away undesired perceptions and thoughts, and you could make a person into anything you wanted. That was what Charmcaster had offered her, and that was what she'd gotten.

Her eyes drifted down to the centuries-old wand resting in her curled fingers, the tool that had made all of it happen. The tool whose wards had necessitated Charmcaster to seek out her help and extend such an unusual offer of partnership in the first place. And it had taken the older girl long, so long, to convince Gwen to just give it all a try. But when she'd given in, the influx of knowledge, and the practical power of putting that knowledge to use, was heady, close to intoxicating. She could do so much _good_ with power like this! It would put Ben's Omnitrix to shame. Charmcaster would have different ideas for how to use the wand, of course, but she had the wand, not Charmcaster. If she couldn't convince her to turn good, or at least be a nice, peaceable neutral, then she could always overpower the teacher with the teacher's own lessons. It would be so perfect.

Those were the cold, hard facts that ran through her mind, but what ran through her heart was pure revulsion. Disgust to have sunk so low, to be lulled into sharing the ambition of someone who was wicked and treacherous to the very core. Both of them had a strong desire to learn, but Charmcaster had other, more immoral urges to fulfill as well, and nothing good would ever come of working with her. All she'd learned in those lessons was how to be a criminal, a manipulator, a monster. Seeing how unrealistically Ben and Grampa hugged each other spontaneously only confirmed it.

"This... is_grotesque_," Gwen said finally, lips curling in distaste. "I should have never let you talk me into doing any of this. I'm going to reverse the magic, and destroy the wand before someone does something even more horrible with it."

Charmcaster's presence close at her side, which had somehow started to seem friendly again like when they'd first met, suddenly turned nervewracking, like a cold ball of ice in the pit of her stomach. "Grotesque, huh. All grown up and using adult words now, hmm, Gwenny? Don't do anything either of us might regret later." The first two sentences had come out very casual, but the last one was icy, a grim warning.

Gwen stopped paying attention to her harmless kin and slowly turned to look at the increasingly-immediate threat of Charmcaster, using the movement to back herself away a couple paces. "I don't know what you were planning on getting out of this in the end, Charmcaster, but I'm not letting you have the wand. You needed me to get through the wards, so it's only fair that I decide what happens to it, anyway." Her fingers flexed around the thin stick of wood, bending it. Not breaking it. Not quite yet. She _should_ break it, before something happened, but she was hesitating.

Charmcaster's eyes widened. Whether it was from alarm, or anger, or something else, Gwen had no idea. "How can you have all that power in your grasp and just walk away from it?" she asked incredulously. "Just a year or two of lessons, Gwen, just a year or two, and with that wand, nations would willingly bow at your feet! The wisdom and might of the ages at your fingertips. Don't you want that?!"

For a moment, just a little moment, Gwen was swayed by the passion of Charmcaster's speech. Of course, the passion was probably faked, a calculation to manipulate her emotions. But fake or real, it tempted her. Previously her heart had stopped her mind from getting carried away, but now, it was the other way around, and she stood firm in her resolution with unmerciful logic as her weapon and shield. "Sometimes we want more than one thing, Charmcaster. Those things can conflict and we have to prioritize. And I don't have the training or connections to be any kind of politician or ruler! Besides, with that kind of power, I'd probably just get frustrated with people acting stupid and blast them to dust when I got sick of them."

"And that's a bad thing?" Charmcaster's lips quirked into a sly smile.

"For you to even ask that question just reminds me how screwed up you are." Gwen took a breath, steeling herself to say something she'd never said to another human being before. She had to make eye contact. Be confident. Be firm, but not mad. "You're _evil_, Charmcaster. I'm not saying this to hurt you or anything, but you're a total sociopath who sees people as stepping stones on the way to the things you want. Maybe your mother didn't love you or something, I don't know, but you need serious help, and I'm not gonna let you screw me over the way I remember you screwing over Hex."

Charmcaster took a step closer, but slowed down when Gwen went into a defensive position. She held her hands up on level with her head, far from her bag of tricks. Still moving, just much slower. But still moving. "Hey, Gwen, let's not fool ourselves here," Charmcaster said with an oddly soothing tone. "That was a nice speech, except for the part about my mother, which is totally not true, by the way. But it was also a pretty redundant speech, dontcha think? We both know I'm a self-centered sneaky little bitch. I like it that way. I was hoping you could learn to see the benefits in the lifestyle, but if you're not interested, that's okay. I'm not going to try and hurt you." Closer and closer, step after step. Gwen tried to back up, but somehow Charmcaster was always just a little bit quicker.

"You're such a liar," Gwen said with a little hysterical humor, rolling the precious wand around in her hand. She didn't want to use it, she hadn't had enough training yet to be sure things wouldn't go all screwy, but if Charmcaster gave her no choice...

"Almost always, but not at the moment," Charmcaster said with such calm, serious innocence that Gwen half-believed her. Another step. And another. "C'mon, relax, pupil. I have enough of an ego that it'd embarrass me to blast my own student. I take pride in my work as a teacher."

There was a strange gleam in Charmcaster's eyes. Gwen tensed up again, seeing her adversary's hands moving, but then froze in shock as Charmcaster's arms merely wrapped around her waist loosely instead of going for the wand. Eyes goggling, she stared into Charmcaster's face for some clue of what the heck was going on, and as always with that villainess, found no helpful clues.

"You weirdo," Gwen said with a tightly-controlled voice, "what do you think you're doing?" But that was a totally needless question, because Charmcaster's face was leaning in closer, and Gwen _knew_ what she was doing now, and it set her heart pounding with disbelieving fear.

Charmcaster paused for a second, lips barely half an inch from Gwen's. And then, while snatching the wand from Gwen's limp grasp, she bit down on Gwen's bottom lip, hard, like an animal would bite. With a shriek, Gwen shoved her away, feeling a small stream of warm blood tickle its way down to her chin. If only she hadn't made the spells wrapping up the minds of Grampa and Ben so thorough, she'd have had backup, but no, she had screwed herself over. Charmcaster had the wand now, and was undeniably the superior magician. Things were about as grim as they'd ever looked.

Charmcaster laughed, a sharp scornful sound that was almost hurtful to hear, and clasped the wand in both hands close to her chest. "Guess you're still a kid for a little while longer, Gwenny. You're right, you _aren't_ ready to play in my league. Have fun unravelling those spells on your relatives without the wand, it'll take you a few weeks. And if you miss anything, you could cause permanent brain damage." She grinned. "As for me, I've got a long few months to spend re-attuning this wand, and no time to waste on a dunce like you, so if you'll excuse me..."

The magician fled, and Gwen didn't give chase. Instead, she sat down, paged through the tiny, now pathetically inadequate spellbook she'd 'acquired' from Charmcaster several years ago, and started looking up anything related to dispelling magic. She'd been so irresponsible, so _stupid_. Charmcaster'd probably been lying about the brain damage thing, just to freak her out with it. Probably.

While the initial 'stop ignoring Gwen' part of the spell dismissal wasn't too hard to manage, the other psychological effects were a real challenge. She studied harder than she'd studied in her entire life, and as the days passed, erased one subconscious hypnotic suggestion after the other, bit by bit, until the two people she cared about more than anyone else in the world were themselves again. At least, they were the same as far as she could tell. In the back of her mind, lurking quietly, was a doubt that would never go away, that she hadn't erased everything, that there were still lingering traces, that she'd screwed everything up and that nothing would ever be the same. And it certainly didn't help that the closest thing she'd ever received to a kiss up to this point in her life had been from _Charmcaster_. Ugh. She vowed to kick the snake's teeth in the next time she saw her.


	18. Chapter 18

18. Bodies

Deciding on a one piece or two piece swimsuit at any given swimming event was one of the bigger internal conflicts Gwen had as she grew up, not that anyone watching her would have known. As the saying went, if you've got it, flaunt it... and it was irrational and childish to be selfconscious about something like that. Anyway, the guys went around without _anything_ from the waist up! Still, as much as Gwen didn't like admitting it to herself, she _was_ a bit of a prude. The idea of boys admiring her for her body instead of for her personality or intelligence bugged her. And around Ben, somehow, things were a little more awkward even than around strangers or classmates.

It was, she decided eventually, because bikinis reminded him that she was a girl. Their interactions almost never took either side's gender into account, and whenever circumstances necessitated it, they both got uncomfortable. Ben reacted to being uncomfortable in a particularly obnoxious way, by being more 'Ben' than ever. Overcompensating, getting even more insulting, more deliberately aggravating, more mischevious. As if he was trying to make up for something. The further she progressed into teenagerdom, the worse it got. She could practically _hear_ him thinking 'Hey, it doesn't matter that Gwen has boobs now, we're still just the same as always!' Seeing _his_ body develop more, get more muscles than most kids his age because of all the Omnitrix-related exercise, didn't affect her in the same way. And the tiny little scars he gradually collected over the years from all the rough scraps somehow only made her feel _more_ comfortable, like his very skin was another kind of secret circulating through like blood through the veins of the trio of Plumber, Omnitrix wearer, and would-be sorceress. The only time she weirded out about it was when she first noticed him shaving the little tentative stubble from his jaw. _That_ had taken some mental squirming to get adjusted to, admittedly. But she never, ever offered to put suntan lotion on him, and he certainly never did it for her.

He went too far when he turned into Ripjaws and stole her bikini top. Okay, so it'd been a deserted beach, with no one but the two of them and Grampa, and between the waterline and her hands she'd easily maintained her modesty, but _still_. Waaaaay past her comfort zone, and she flung the most unspeakably unGwenlike, obscene insults at him for almost ten minutes before Grampa finally convinced Ben to give her her top back. In revenge, when Ben asked her to bury him in the sand later on she did it _very_ thoroughly, and left him there till it got dark and he was cold.

But in a way, it was kind of a fortunate prank. Fortunate because it gave her an excuse to go back to one piece suits whenever she was swimming around Ben, and after doing that for long enough it was easy enough to say that one pieces were all she owned that fit her. And after that things between them relaxed again, and she was able to relax and be herself when boys were looking at her. What was the point of giving such a good view to strangers, anyway? Better to leave a little mystery. And anyone who was interested in a girl purely for her body wasn't someone she wanted to talk to anyway. Right? Right. If she wanted to pick up a cute guy, she'd go to the library or something. As for tans, if she ever wanted one that badly, she'd just go to a salon. It didn't make her any less mature or self-confident. No, the immature ones were the girls who went practically naked except for a few strings and a couple tiny patches, trying to snag a boytoy the only way they knew how, with crude hormonal attraction. It was disgusting, really. She was better than them. And if Ben wanted to drool over those kinds of girls, well, she'd let him! Wasn't any of _her_ business who he wanted to waste his time being googly-eyed over. It didn't have anything at all to do with her. Even though she couldn't quite repress a feeling of warm, smug satisfaction whenever a snobby, shallow, mostly-naked girl burned him for staring a bit too long or pulling one of his 'Hey, look at me, I'm cool, really!' stunts. He'd learn one of these days what was _really_ important in a girl was the inside, not the outside. And if not, she didn't care. Really, she didn't.


	19. Chapter 19

19. Warrior's Pride

Gwen became intensely attentive when Vilgax strained, muscles bulging, underneath the colllapsed debris, and then gave up. It was far from the first time in just that hour that she'd seen him try as much. Far from the _tenth_ time. But it always made her tense up. She'd seen firsthand how incredibly strong he was, and being completely at the alien warlord's mercy before Ben and Grampa dug her out was not an appealing prospect.

Maybe if she distracted him he'd neglect his escape attempts for a little bit. And it was starting to get really creepy, laying less than twenty feet from one of hers and Ben's biggest enemies, and not saying anything about it. She relaxed, stared up at the fallen steel framework that lay in a twisted nest less than three feet up above her, and talked to Vilgax without looking at him. Eye contact was supposed to be a sign of hostility with predators and other dangerous animals, so she avoided it. Still, she couldn't help being snarky anyway. It was practically required at this point.

"Well, this is whatcha get for crashing through an ancient Tetramand palace without worrying about what was going to happen afterwards. Not really your shining moment. Maybe I'll put all the juicier details up on my blog so your minions can read it and laugh at you."

Vilgax glared at her balefully with his narrow red eyes. "What makes you think you're going to live that long, girl? You may have been beneath my notice in the past, but it would barely take a swing of my arm to reduce you to a heap of ruined flesh once my mobility is restored."

Gwen repressed the urge to gulp, and tried to keep herself nonchalant. Outwardly, at least. Play it cool. This guy was a professional monster. If she showed weakness then it would only make him more eager to crush her. It helped that she kept her eyes locked onto the junk overhead. Watched the little motes of dust dance around, examined the crackling plaster, appreciated the disarrayed but stil functional light fixtures. "Well, for one thing, I've got plenty of moving space, and you're trapped under... however many jillions of tons of junk it takes to keep you held down. For another thing, once Ben gets over here and realizes what happened, he'll go Fourarms and start excavating. Do you really think he's gonna free _you_ when he does that?" Her voice had a biting confidence to it she didn't feel. It was totally possible that Ben could accidentally free Vilgax while digging, considering how much stuff had to be on top of the alien to keep him from moving. "And lastly, of course, let's not forget we've beaten you every single time you've tried to mess with us. How does that feel, Mister Mighty Alien Conqueror?"

She couldn't help but look over at him with that last remark, but it was a mistake. Seeing his arms strain again, even if in complete futility, was scary. Seeing those tentacles writhe wasn't much better.

"Do not make the mistake of thinking luck and the power of the Omnitrix to reflect anything on yours or that boy's personal skills. I have walked over the corpses of far better than the likes of _you_ to attain that which I seek. The soil of a thousand worlds has been purged by fire and millions of foolish little children just like you have been given back to the void. Only a fool or a madman would stop now, so close to the ultimate goal."

"Okay, now _that_ actually kinda scared me." OH CRAP! Had she said that OUT LOUD?! Crap. The way he was looking at her, she _had_. Damn Ben for not rescuing sooner. Damn Vilgax for bringing the building crashing down in the first place. Damn _her_ for trying to distract Vilgax in the first place. Damn the long-dead alien architects, too, while she was damning things. They should have made a sturdier building! Such a long time trapped with an archenemy, and she hadn't said anything until the last couple minutes. No wonder she was cracking up. "Look, why do you even _want_ to conquer... whatever you're trying to conquer, anyway?" she snapped, trying to use anger to hide the shake in her voice and cover for her previous slipup. "For all you know we could die down here. This could be your last big chance to give yourself a dramatic motivation or something. If you make it a good one, if I survive I can write you a nice biography. Well, not _that_ nice, but..." She was babbling now, she was so scared. Great. Real nice, way to stay in control, Gwen. But she did want to know. It'd been bugging her for a while now. Most of the people they fought had clearer motivations than 'Steal Omnitrix for the creation of mighty armies to take over stuff and also things, rawr.' Vilgax was an intelligent enough foe to explain himself better.

The loud rumbling snort that emerged from... whatever Vilgax had that was equivalent to nostrils, was so deep it was like something from a bull. "An ignorant little mammal like you would not know of my great lineage, that the blood that courses through my veins once flowed through the great God of War Alkemekoar Himself. I have been born and bred to slaughter. Conquering the weaker, foolish races is my destiny, and once all are united under my relentless grasp, I shall forge a new and better universe. There will be no more petty squabbling, no more bureacracy. Only purposeful application of strength and power. It will be beautiful and terrible as the heart of a star."

It took a few moments to take all that in. As far as motivations went, it wasn't really sympathetic, but there was a twisted kind of poetry in it that appealed. She thought about quoting the whole thing on her blog, then decided spelling Alkewhozit's name was beyond her.

"Must be nice, knowing what you want to do with your life right from the start. Most of us have to figure that out as we go along."

"That is why you are weak." He gave her a meaningful gave, the closest thing to a lack of hostility she'd ever seen from him. "And that is why you will never win, in the end. Your race is full of doubts and uncertainties. No true warrior acknowledges an enemy inside himself, for he is focused on the enemy without. In the end, your kind are fit only to be slaves, like the Galvans."

"The Galvans _made_ that watch you want so badly. If you can't even snag a tiny little invention created by a supposedly inferior race, what does that say about _you_?" she taunted, completely against her common sense. It was too easy to poke holes in the beliefs and arguments of a fanatic, and it was far too tempting to resist the urge to mock, when he'd given her and her relatives so much trouble and punishment over the years. Payback time. So payback consisted of verbal taunting, so what? It was surprisingly similar to taunting Ben, and in a strange way, almost as satisfying.

Except that when Ben was annoyed, he never snarled at her and twisted around in a way like he wanted to squeeze the life out of her body. "When I am free of this wreckage, I shall make you beg forgiveness for your impudence, child!"

"Oh, I see how it is. I'm beneath your notice... unless I piss you off. Never tried to talk your way out of your problems, huh? Violence doesn't solve everything."

"Violence," he replied coldly and without hesitation, "is the ultimate expression of sentience, and my birthright as conqueror. Those who reject the necessity and benefit of bloodshed and conflict are doomed to stagnation, obsolescence, and extinction."

Gwen stared into those red eye slits, wondering vaguely if Vilgax's personal cold-bloodedness had anything to do with his biological cold-bloodedness. But no, she'd met a Chimera Sui Generis who'd been pretty decent and upstanding. Some people were just screwed up. "You have serious issues," she told him frankly. Was it better or worse that he had a whole philosophy and lifestyle built into it, instead of just being a raving irrational loony like so many other bad guys? Somehow she felt as though it made it better _and_ worse.

"The unexpected duration of the conflict between this boy and myself has encouraged me to make some minor further analysis into the current state of your species," Vilgax went on unexpectedly, tone sneering. "Just as expected, of course... cowardly, worthless creatures, you enjoy in this century more food, more wealth, more luxury than ever before in your pathetic history. Diseases contained and eradicated one after the other. Growing mastery over the land and its resources. All these things, and are you happy?" She had a feeling Vilgax would have been smiling at her if he'd had a proper visible mouth. His voice was smug. "No, of course not. You have little reason to be miserable, and yet you _create_ problems to fill the emptiness within you. Trivial religious disputes. Political dissension. Theft. Vandalism. Sexual deviancy. Usage of substances to alter the senses and thoughts. Self-punishment and mortification of the flesh. Gender confusion. Anger, distrust, fear, deceit, fragmentation. And do you know _why_ you do all these things?" The way he put it, it felt as though he was pinning every little sin and problem of humanity on her personally, and she felt the need to respond, to defend herself and her very species, but he went on, not giving her a chance. "Because, even though you have everything you _think_ you want, more than ever before in times gone past, you still understand, down in the darkest, hidden depths your pathetic, monkey-chattering core, that you have a _need_ to hurt. To cause pain and to endure it! You struggle with all your might to deny it to yourselves as much as to anyone else, you lie and deny it with every wag of your tongues, but... life... _is_... violence. By rejecting that, you reject life itself, and will ever be wretched for it."

As Vilgax looked at her with the solemn eyes of a true zealot, knowing neither doubt nor fear, something quivered inside her, something trembled and squirmed and begged to be let free. She closed her eyes tight, and took one, two, three deep breaths before she trusted herself enough to look at him again. And the worst thing about it, the very worst thing, was that a part of her thought he might be right. If she had the chance to never fight a villain ever again, she would have run away from the option as fast as possible, and she wasn't even anywhere near as gung-ho on fighting as, say, Ben. She wasn't sure what to say to Vilgax. Was there even any point in saying anything to someone who'd already made up his mind about everything anyway? It would do more good to talk to the plaster.

But it didn't matter, Vilgax wasn't even looking at her anymore. He'd turned his head to look in the opposite direction, clearly signalling a disdainful end to the conversation. It was fine by her. He was depressing to talk to, anyway. She didn't even know why she'd bothered in the first place. Maybe she'd hoped that there was a part of him that was rational and normal and wanted to see other people as people, and not obstacles to be obliterated. Feh, optimism was for the birds. Rationality was much more useful.

Staring for a long time further at Vilgax's insanely broad forearms, she got to thinking that maybe Vilgax had left out a detail or two. He hadn't been lying about anything, he'd actually shown a kind of passion, which would have been satisfying if it weren't so pants-wettingly scary. But perhaps there was another reason why Vilgax refused to walk away from Ben. What would it be like, she wondered, to live a life where you were expected and taught to be an unstoppable killing machine, and proved all of it... up until the point where you came head long up against a human kid and then just got your butt kicked, over and over again? Even if Vilgax made a good fight of it each and every time. Even if he came close to winning sometimes. There wasn't really any denying that Vilgax always flat out lost in the end. Not even any partial victories, not that he deserved any, of course. What would she do, if she were Vilgax, in a situation like that? Well, she couldn't give up. That would have been humiliating. Give up? Might as well admit you couldn't hack it to all the other aliens! And then the ones you'd already conquered might start getting... ideas... about how you're a bigger pushover than you're making yourself out to be. No, if Vilgax admitted final defeat to a foe like Ben, and word got out, it would be the end of him. A warrior who wanted to be a great leader had to be more than a fighter, he had to have an awe-inspiring reputation. At first, the Omnitrix had drawn Vilgax to Ben, but by now, it was different. Vilgax _couldn't_ walk away, not because of the stupid Omnitrix, but because of _Ben_. It really was kill or be killed, someone like Vilgax couldn't bear to contemplate a life with any other possibilities. Giving up would destroy everything that the warlord used to define himself as a person.

And at that realization, watching the lights flicker dimly over Vilgax's powerful but useless muscles, she actually felt a little sorry for him. She said a little prayer, though she had no clear idea who she was saying it to, asking for Vilgax to change, or circumstances to change, or _something_ to change, so that there could be a future without anyone dead and without anyone unhappy.

Unfortunately, while she was distracted with this uncharacteristic train of thoughts, Vilgax finally broke free with a mighty effort, in the process forcefully dislodging a huge piece of plaster-coated timber that flew towards her head. There wasn't time or space to dodge, even if she'd been in the state of mind to do so.

"Weakling."

It was the last thing she heard before she passed out.


	20. Chapter 19 & a Half

19 & ½ - Valentine's Day Special

It didn't really feel like she'd thought it would feel. Then again, she hadn't had any clear, predefined expectations to start with. Just sort of vague ideas of mood and atmosphere and emotions, cobbled together from random romance stories and movies and the general opinions of society at large. It didn't feel dirty, or naughty, or exciting. More than anything it just felt tiring, and maybe a little boring, and pathetic. Gwen had never in her life experienced the sensation of being depressed simultaneously with being turned on, but there was a first time for everything.

Nothing was the _guy's_ fault. He was great. More than great. Witty, charming, considerate almost to a fault, and oh God, totally sexy. The way he touched her was unreproachably enjoyable in a biological sense, with just enough uncertainty to be cute and make her feel better about her own virginity, and just enough confidence and strength to keep the pace fresh and the juices (both literal and figurative) flowing. But it was all the mechanisms of biology. Like pushing buttons. He did this, she got turned on, he did that, she got turned on more, she did this, they both got turned on, and then the inevitable conclusion. As far as sex went, she couldn't have hoped for a better first time, so why did she feel so freaking _gloomy_?

As a mature and independent woman she had made a decision to have a one night stand with this cute guy, and there was nothing wrong with that. So what if she'd probably made the decision just so she wouldn't be alone on Valentine's Day, the cheap whore of the holiday lineup. That was still her decision and she was satisfied with it. To change her mind and start regretting it when she'd gone into it full well knowing what it was would be the sort of stupid thing the younger, more childish Gwen would have done. It'd been _fun_. But still, she was tired.

She stayed the night. He fell asleep before her, leaving her alone with her thoughts for discordant lullaby melodies. She didn't even know his first name, and didn't _want_ to know. The idea of knowing his first name filled her with repulsion, though she couldn't say why. He knew hers, but that didn't seem to matter. What would Grampa have thought, to see her now? Or her parents? Or Ben? No, fuck that, it didn't matter what they would have thought, because they'd never know, and she was her own person with her own choices to make! For once, it didn't have anything to do with magic or aliens or Omnitrixes or any of the rest of it. Maybe she just hadn't wanted to be alone on Valentine's. Maybe that was all.

Holding her body unnaturally still so as to not wake up her partner, feeling the sweat and other fluids dry into a chill on her body, there was unwantedly ample time to think of how else she could have spent the holiday. She could have done what she usually did, and treated it like any other regular day. Or she could have gone barhopping. She knew a lot of Ben's single male friends usually went barhopping on Valentine's in hops of easy lays. And then there was Ben himself, who rarely went out of his way to talk to her, but always quietly managed, somehow, to be available whenever she wanted to talk. She could have called him up and done something with him, just to pass the time. They probably would have ended up listing the hundred and one things they hated about Valentine's, from the diamond corruption in Africa to the shamelessly materialistic commercials. But no. Any other day of the year, was a day to talk to Ben, if she felt like it. But not freaking Valentine's Day. To spend that holiday in the company of her cousin because she couldn't find better company, like some idiot inbred Southern hick, what the _hell_ kind of way was _that_ for an intelligent and self-sufficient young woman to live?!

Her leg touched something rubbery and damply cold, and she flinched before realizing it was the condom. Ugh. Weren't they supposed to be thrown away after being used, or something? Oh well, Mister Perfect One Night Stand had to have at least one flaw to be a regular human being. At least he didn't snore. She slid away from the center of the bed to stretch out across the edge, staring mindlessly at velvet curtains that were really quite beautiful, but brought her no pleasure in seeing.

There wasn't any understanding why she felt so down about everything. This was the sort of things adults did, wasn't it? This was _real life_. Not the superheroing and spellcasting and villain fighting. She'd gone into it with the clear knowledge that she was using the guy for physical pleasure, and he was doing the same for her, and that was the end of it. Minimum quota of orgasms surpassed, expectations met and then some, Gwen had no reason to feel bad about anything. Except maybe the fact that she'd lost her cherry in a loveless event. But valuing female virginity over male virginity was just sexism. Both were equally worthless. She wasn't going to turn into a slut or anything, but she wouldn't regret what she'd done, either. She _wouldn't_.

There was a small bowl of pastel-colored candies nearby. In the hope that chewing on something would calm her mind and let her get to sleep, Gwen reached out and took one. A little pink heart, with letters on it that were too tiny to read in the dimness. She popped it into her mouth without a second thought, and immediately gagged at the offensive chalky off-sweet taste. A mouth prepared to spit, a tongue prepared to launch the damn thing as far away from her tastebuds as possible, were thwarted by the simple fact that there was nothing nearby to spit into. Not without roaming around the room, and she didn't want to chance waking up the guy. So she kept the heart very, very still in her mouth, and prayed it would dissolve as quickly as possible with her tasting as little of it as possible.

Dammit. She remembered, now. She hated those little chalky heart things. They came around every Valentine's, and she'd _always_ hated them. Dammit, why hadn't she remembered she hated these stupid candy hearts before she put one in her mouth? She did this every freaking year! Valentine's Day would come, and she'd eat the freaking candy heart, and she'd hate it and ask herself why she hadn't remembered that fact from every other time she'd eaten them. Why did she keep forgetting, and keep doing it, and keep remembering too late?! Gwen stared at the bowl of candy hearts in hatred, wishing to erase them and their stupid trite cutesy messages from the world forever. The only things written on those hearts were lies, anyway. Everything lied. The commercials, the movies, the therapists, the books. Everything. Life wasn't anything like any of that, and she wanted to know why people kept making things that lied when they _knew_ it was all lies. Nothing was true except for the words that passed from person to person, and most of that was lies, too. Lips puckered in the repressed urge to spit out the offensive-tasting candy, Gwen cried a little without any idea of why she was crying. It was a mere grudging admittance of halting, shuddering teardrops, done as quietly as possible; she was terrified that the man beside her in bed would wake up and catch her being so stupid. She felt more like a child than she'd ever felt when she'd actually been a child.


	21. Chapter 20

20. Plumbing the Depths (Collateral Damage Remix)

It should have been her or Ben to get hurt. Not Grampa. _Anyone_ but Grampa. It wasn't like the time when the red-skinned punk girl had sent him to the hospital. There weren't any hospitals for miles around. For that matter, while on the road they hadn't seen any _buildings_ for the entire day! Pity the person who ran out of gas in the middle of... Gwen _thought_ they were in New Mexico, but wasn't completely sure. No helpful people, no phones, none of the support systems of society and civilization were available.

She wanted to get mad at Ben, but that would have been stupid. He was just as freaked out as her over the whole thing, and it wasn't like he'd done anything wrong. _He_ hadn't made the (probably Vilgax-sent) robot drone attack them. Nor had he dodged in such a way as to encourage the robot's misses to get anywhere near Grampa. Crap happened. Grampa got laser-zapped, and got a nasty bump on the head to boot, and Gwen wasn't sure which was, medically speaking, the more serious problem. What she _was_ sure of was that she had to take control of the situation, because Grampa was too dazed to think, and Ben was too pissed to think.

"Ben? Ben, get the first aid kit out. I bet we can find something in there to help him. Grampa, come on, let's sit down for a little bit. Over here... no, not there, _here_. Okay. Just relax for a sec while Ben gets the kit out. Alright?" Maneuvering the nearly senseless, heavy and bulky mass of Grampa's body was hard. There was something wrong with his eyes. The pupils kept changing... they dilated, then shrank into pinpoints, then dilated again. And Grampa didn't seem to be hearing anything she was saying, although he didn't resist her efforts to move him around. She turned her head to the back of the van where Ben was noisily rummaging around. The dork probably didn't even know where the first aid kit _was_, even though Grampa'd specifically pointed it out to them like five times. "Ben, I think that laserbeam did something weird to Grampa, more than a regular concussion. We may have to find some help somehow. Do you see the kit?"

"No!" The word was almost a growl, filled with frustration and self-directed anger. They didn't have time for this.

"Relax, Ben," she said forcefully. "Look behind the cushion on the left side. It's a little white box with a big red cross on it, just like in _Doom_."

"I remember what it looks like, spazoid. It's not there."

"Are you sure you're looking on the _left_ side?" She jumped a little when Grampa nearly crushed her, swaying down against her spinelessly. It took a two-handed push with all her might, leaving her arms aching, to get him straightened out again on the seat so gravity wouldn't turn against her like that a second time.

"The left when you look into the back from the front, or the left when you're looking at the front?"

With a disgusted sigh, Gwen hurled herself into the back of the van to find the kit herself. After almost five minutes of irritable searching, she reached the same conclusion Ben had, that the kit was nowhere around. Which did not make one freaking bit of sense. Grampa was always careful to keep it in its place and fully stocked! Why would it be missing now, when they actually needed it, when it was around every other day?!

"Uh, Gwen..."

She looked up to see her cousin with a depressed look on his face, holding up a crisply blackened, twisted hunk of plastic. It took a moment for her to realize that it was the first aid kit they'd been hunting for. The robot hadn't just blasted Grampa, hadn't just blasted the van, it had blasted the first aid kit with which they could've treated him!

"Great. Talk about adding insult to injury."

Ben tossed the box on the floor with a snort. "I'm gonna go kick the crap out of what's left of that thing."

"Like you didn't smash it enough before?" Ben didn't reply as he wandered off.

Frowning, she picked up the kit and cracked it open, searching for anything that wasn't totally destroyed. Instructions, of course, were ash. Likewise, the bandages and bandaids. She did find some smelly clear goop that had sort of survived, even if it's plastic bottle hadn't. Well, she didn't know what it did, but it was better than nothing, and it couldn't hurt, could it? Shrugging, she scooped up the gel in her fingers, planning to smear it on Grampa's egg-sized bump as delicately as possible.

A deep-throated bellow from up front left her startled enough that she fell down, smearing the liquid medicine off her fingers and all over the floor. She scrambled up front, expecting another robot attack, and found Grampa going through something between a stroke and a flashback.

"Where the hell is Fraudin?!" he roared in a voice she had never, ever heard come from his mouth before. Random jerking motions of his arms, except they weren't totally random, just out of place. Like they belonged in a different environment and situation and Grampa hadn't realized it yet, his brain in a totally different location from his body. Eyes that frantically tried to see everything, but seemed to see nothing. Nothing _real_, anyway. "The whole place is, is falling apart and the man who's supposed to be in charge is nowhere to be found! If central checks up on us now, who do you think's gonna get the blame? Me! That's right, jolly ol' Max Tennyson, the guy who's always got a handle on every little thing thing, always dependable, never takes his days off, always turns in his reports the day before they're due with every I dotted and every T crossed! That's who they'll go to lookin' for answers, 'cause I've always got 'em, right?! WELL I DON'T HAVE ANY ANSWERS NOW, GODDAMMIT!"

Before Gwen could even think of anything to say, lips twitching but nothing audible coming out of her mouth, he turned around and focused on her with frightening intensity. She couldn't help flinching, but when she realized she was, she steeled herself, holding straight as a rod. Had to be calm. Had to be rational. God knows _someone_ had to be.

"Who're you?" he hissed suspiciously, eyes narrow, the pupils still fluctuating. Looming over her like some of Ben's alien forms loomed over bad guys. "I've never seen you around here before. What's your authorization level?"

"L-look, Grampa, you, you need to chill out and sit down for a second-"

"CHILL OUT?!" he screeched, causing her to recoil further. "YOU LITTLE PISSANT, I BET YOU'RE THE INSIDER WHO LEAKED LAST WEEK'S RECON TO VILGAX! ADMIT IT! IT WAS YOU, WASN'T IT?!"

The most unlikely of all saviors came to her rescue. A voice piped up from just behind her, sounding insanely serious and professional in a way she'd never heard it before, just as she'd never heard Grampa's voice so loony before. "Plumber sub-lieutenants Benjamin Hero and Gwendolyn Mage authorization level zeta-mauve reporting for duty, sir," Ben's voice came coolly, as if he had everything under control. "Don't mind Mage. She just got out of training camp so she doesn't know what's what yet."

Whether by blind luck or by Ben somehow knowing what he was doing (had he just made up the rank and code, or had he paid more attention to Grampa's stories than she'd ever thought?), it seemed to calm Grampa down. He stopped jerking around and relaxed in his seat, though he still looked very unhappy. "Right. Right, well, Hero... huh. Makin' 'em a little short these days, aren't they?" he asked, cloudy eyes wandering from Ben to Gwen and back again.

Gwen saw an opportunity to break in and stop the whole farce before it got started. "Yeah, that's because we're not-"

Ben elbowed her. "_Shut up,_" he whispered furiously in her ear.

She pinched him. "_You shut up, what do you think you're doing?_"

"_He's too deep in to snap out, we just gotta play along so we can keep him from hurting himself, dummy_! We're a lil undernourished," Ben added to Grampa in a normal voice. "So, what've you guys got to eat around here anyway? Anything fun, like haggis or cow tongue? I hear you Tennysons like that kinda stuff."

Grampa laughed, but it was a guttural, unpleasant laugh, with spittle and bite in it. "_HAUGH!_ Yeah, right, kid, did Joline put you up to say that crap? Bitch never did forgive me for breaking her printer. Look, when you're doin' fieldwork you can eat whatever the fuck you want, but as long as you're in deskwork, it's coffee, vegetable medley, and Salisbury steak, the end. And you might mistake the first one for the last one if you let it sit long enough. Welcome to the glorious life, heh, of being a government employee." Then he burst into tears, great big drops rolling down his cheeks. Gwen exchanged looks with Ben, who was just as confused as she was. "Oh, God, why did you take her away from me... s'not fair... VILGAX YOU SON OF A BITCH!" he suddenly erupted, but quieted down again into grief instantly. "I'm sorry... I'm sorryyyyyy..." he wailed, clutching his face in his hands and rocking back and forth.

"_It can't be just the bump on the head making him act like this, can it?_" Ben whispered to her while they stared in bewilderment and any number of other, less pleasant emotions. "_I mean, even if it was a really bad bump on the head, they don't do things like this. Do they?_"

"_Why're you asking ME?_ _I don't know,_" she whispered back, wide-eyed.

"_Well, you're always saying you're the smart one!_" he shot back. "_All that time you spend on that laptop, you never looked up anything USEFUL on it, or what? Whadda you do, just surf porn?_"

"_That's what YOU do, perv,_" she hissed. "_And I know, because you never figured out how to erase the browser's URL history! I looked up a LOT of useful stuff on it, thank you very much, just not head injuries!_"

Ben flushed cherry-red and he looked away from her, defeated. "_It was just like a couple times, I was curious, okay? I think I remember some stuff I found on Wikipedia once. We're supposed to get his feet higher than his head, aren't we?_"

"_I don't think so. Isn't that for bleeding?_"

"_Oh, whatever! You don't know anything anyway. This is such a waste of time._" Ben moved forward to hesistantly put an arm on Grampa's back, patting. "It'll be alright, man. I promise. I know it hurts and stuff, but it's gonna be okay." Grampa didn't seem to hear, and just continued swaying back and forth, sobbing quieter now but still steady. "Grampa? I love you," Ben said very distinctly, eyes locked on Grampa as though he was afraid to glance at her, see what she thought of him saying that. "It'll be okay."

Feeling ashamed, as though she'd done something wrong in letting Ben say it first, she moved up and put a hand on Grampa's back too. There was ample room, she didn't even have to touch Ben's hand, which was looking sweaty. "I love you too, Grampa. Just hang in there. We're going to get you some help."

Ben looked back at her quizzically. "What kinda help? We're out in the middle of, like, nowhere times infinity." Whispering didn't seem very necessary anymore; Grampa's world had narrowed to the mysterious one inside his own skull.

"If we drive long enough we'll get somewhere, right? At least a gas station or something so we can find someone." It enraged and humiliated her that they _needed_ someone, that with everything that made them special, they still couldn't fix _this_ on their own. But they did need someone, anyone, that just knew what to do. Because they didn't.

"You wanna DRIVE?"

"No, I want you to drive."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence broken up only by Grampa's quieter and quieter sounds of mourning over... who? She didn't know, and probably didn't want to know. "This is a really lame time to be sarcastic, Gwen."

"I'm not being sarcastic! I want you to drive so I can look up stuff on the computer at the same time, okay? It's not like I _trust_ you to drive like anything other than a braindamaged monkey, or anything, but it's just the best choice right now." She wasn't quite sure why she added that last part about the monkey. Seeing the hurt look on Ben's face, she almost regretted it.

As usual, the hurt turned into sullenness. "Fine, you go hide your face in your computer and I'll drive."

And that was what they did. Gwen had had high hopes when she'd turned on her computer, but those hopes quickly became angry despair as she had the connection for a second, and then lost it for a minute... and then had it for a second again, and then lost it for five minutes... and so on and on and on. She lost count of the number of times she clicked reload, trying to get just one page to load properly all the way. It never worked. They had finally reached a part of the globe where her computer had no internet access, thus rendering her hundreds of dollars of fancy electronics about as useful as her: in other words, a waste of space. Ugh. At least Ben could still go hero. Why couldn't he have had a medic alien form?! The awful way he was driving didn't do anything to improve her temper. It was the very opposite of smooth, with lots of sudden, sharp jerks and uneven speed. Sure, he hadn't crashed yet, but there was nothing to crash _into_, after all. A particularly rough slowdown that was almost a total stop slammed her head straight into the side of the van, and she snarled. Enough was enough. Ben was under a lot of stress, but so was _she_, and if he kept knocking the van around it wouldn't do any good for Grampa. She tramped up front to give him a piece of her mind.

"Hey, dork, this isn't bumpercars you know!"

"I know that!" Ben practically yelled at her, totally out of proportion to the insult, and she flinched. "S-sorry," he quieted down immediately. "S'just I'm too short to really reach all the pedals right, and-"

Gwen took in the scene in the passenger seat, and panicked. "Did you let him fall asleep?!" It was a redundant question, Grampa was _snoring_. Even though his eyes were still partly open. It would've been very creepy if the raw terror inside her had left any room for being creeped out.

"Y-yeah, why?! It's safer for him now like this, and he needs to rest to get his strength back and stuff!"

"You idiot, you're not supposed to let people with head injuries fall asleep! Sometimes they never wake up!" She'd read it... somewhere. Somewhere fairly reputable, she was certain. Mostly certain. Anyway, was there any point in taking a chance?!

Under almost any other circumstances, seeing Ben freak out as much as he did at that moment would have been incredibly satisfying. "_WHAT?!_" The van swerved in a way that did not at all match the pavement it was rolling over.

"Watch the road!" she yelled at him, shaking Grampa's shoulders as gently as she dared. She didn't want to hurt him more, but she wanted him to wake up, _now_.

"Gwen, I didn't know, I swear-"

"It's _fine_, just keep on driving." It _wasn't_ fine, she had no idea how she kept her voice from shaking, but some part of her instinctively knew that focusing Ben on a specific task and keeping him to it was the best thing for him right now. When Grampa groaned and mumbled something about his neck hurting, the relief that flooded through her was almost euphoric. She looked all over his neck and couldn't see anything wrong with it. Not that that reassured her much. For all she knew there could be damage she _couldn't_ see, right? Who knew what alien robot lasers could do to human bodies.

Grampa still didn't recognize them, still didn't recognize where he was, but at least his hallucinations or whatever they were had taken on a less viscerally active tone. Mostly, he just talked to himself, droning on and on about wild and crazy events that might have been real, or might have been made up, or might have been a little bit of both. She hoped that the more unfun parts were made up, imagined. The missions botched by random little details, the colorful fatalities, the office infighting, the deadly technological malfunctions, the betrayals and the assassinations. She didn't know if she'd ever have the courage to ask him, if he got better and things went back to normal. _When_ things got better, she corrected herself fiercely. WHEN.

Ben started wondering if it was illegal for a kid to drive a car even in a medical emergency like this. She told him to not worry about it, considering all the _other_ illegal things he did on a regular basis without bothering to think about it. Always for doing good, he snapped back! A mere look from her sufficed to get him to correct himself to 'mostly' for doing good. They kept on talking, as much as Gwen dared to talk to him for fear of distracting him from driving, especially during Grampa's most disturbed ramblings, to keep their minds off it. Every few minutes they tried to make contact with him again, break through, but he didn't acknowledge their existence. Not once did his mutterings over the past include her or Ben, which made her feel angry, and then completely ashamed for being angry over something so incredibly petty. They had no right for a place in the subconscious of their grandfather compared to his dead wife, who took up so much of his rants that it amazed her that she'd never heard him talk about the woman before today. She hoped with silent desperation that a building with people, _any_ building with _any_ people, would show up soon, pop up on the horizon like one of those books with the cutouts that would unfold in 3D when opened. What would they do if they ran out of gas? Would resorting to the Omnitrix make things better or worse? Should she keep trying to get on the internet again instead of tending to Grampa's disordered mind and Ben's disordered driving? Should she get Ben to break the speed limit, or would that just use up gas quicker? Should she take the wheel instead? If nightfall came before they found something, what then? Did she _really_ remember how to read road signs as much as she _thought_ she did? The road never seemed so flat, so smooth, so long. Like a snake coiled around the world, biting its own tail.


	22. Chapter 21

21. The Last Laugh

_XLR8 raced with ease through the forest after his target, sidewinding effortlessly through the trees. Roots and brambles and ditches and bushes were all equally ineffective in slowing his progress, in creating a crack in his seamless agile maneuvers. Ben had always loved XLR8 despite the form's lack of brute strength, and it was obvious why. Inhuman speed allowed for some of the most incredible tactical flexibility ever imagined, and had room left over for some crazy practical jokes to boot. XLR8 almost made things too EASY, he complained sometimes afterwards, but it was the kind of easy that left him cackling with triumphant glee. That poor crook didn't have a chance._

_At least, the crook didn't have a chance until the Omnitrix timed out in the middle of the chase, while XLR8 was in midair from hopping over a large anthill. Ben, back to his normal self, lost all control over his momentum, but the momentum didn't leave with XLR8. Once a force for good, it decided it had a more sinister part to play now, and sent Ben's helpless body hurtling into a tree with the force of a, well, a speeding bullet. Whoever thought comic symbolism could be warped so horribly? Ben didn't have time to cry out, let alone do react in any meaningful way. Which was something of a mercy, because it meant that he didn't have time to suffer before he impaled himself on a thick, jagged branch, two feet of wood piercing straight through his neck while the rest of his body slammed against the trunk and crushed every bone in his body._

_The blood pooled down thickly at the tree's base, gushing and trickling into a miniature lake, far bigger than it should have been, even though human bodies did indeed contain a ridiculous amount of blood compared to the physical space they occupied. Gwen saw her reflection in the crimson fluid. By all rights that reflection should have screamed at the horrible sight. But instead, it just giggled._

Gwen woke up with a startled jerk, mouth partially open, eyes going instantly from closed to wide and staring, even though there was nothing to see in the dark. A moment to collect her senses, take in the soft blanket and the mattress and pillow. Just a dream. That was all. Just a really stupid dream. Feeling chilly despite the blanket, she realized her body was actually damp with cold sweat. Wow. She'd actually woken up in a cold sweat from a nightmare, for the first time in her whole life. It was a good thing she hadn't woken up Grampa or Ben-

Idiot, she was _home_ now. Home, with her parents. Her eyes were adjusting enough to see the little specks of uneven paint on the ceiling. Nevermind that the word 'home' somehow seemed, in her mind, to fit Grampa's weird rustbucket slash Plumber tech-enhanced van more than the house she spent most of her life in. Grampa and Ben weren't around to wake up because she was home, and home wasn't with them. It was spring, not summertime, and she had to get a good sleep because tomorrow wasn't just the first day of school, it was the first day of the last grade of high school. Even though the real classwork probably wouldn't begin in earnest for a few days, she had to be prepared and organized. Teachers usually used the first two days to give an overall layout of what you needed and what you needed to do for the rest of the semester, and she couldn't afford to forget anything important because she was tired.

Closing her eyes, forcing herself not to fidget, Gwen did her best to get back to sleep, ignoring the clammy feeling along her body. The blackness of the insides of her eyelids gave her imagination an ample canvas to run through the sequence of events in her dream again. The gore had been totally overblown, like a ninja film or something. It should have been funny, _South Park_'s Kenny dying again funny, but she didn't feel like laughing. Instead, there was a heavy pit of dread in her stomach that refused to dissolve.

It didn't make any sense to worry. Ben was a lot better with his alien forms than he'd used to be, and from long experience he'd gotten enough of a mental timer in his head that he could predict when the watch was going to time out and act accordingly so it didn't leave him in a bad situation. Not up to Grampa or Gwen standards of tactical safety, maybe, but not nearly as thoughtless as he'd been as a kid. _That_ was when she should have been worried sick for him, when he'd been a little prepubescent brat with no clue how the vigilante business worked. Not now. But the image of Ben hanging limply from the tree's branch wouldn't let her be. For all the danger the three of them had gone through together, they'd never really discussed the possibility of Ben dying. Ben wasn't the kind of person to think about it, or to care if he did think about it. A smile curled her lips remembering what he'd said the day the Omnitrix had latched onto him. He'd said he could use it to help people. And that was darn well what he went about doing. Sure, he'd used it for childish, selfish things too... but he'd _been_ a child back then, so why fault him for behaving like one? The really interesting thing was that it'd never seemed to cross his mind to think about the risks involved. Superheroes and various other eccentric vigilante types got killed sometimes. The _adult_ ones. A kid was... not doomed, necessarily, but the odds were definitely against someone so young, simply because he lacked the experience and tactical judgement of his older opponents. Ben had been incredibly lucky to survive for so long flying by the seat of his pants, not suffering any serious permanent injuries. Maybe not thinking about it had actually helped him. Surely any normal kid with a realistic grasp of the consequences of his actions would have frozen up at the wrong moment sooner or later.

And she'd scarcely been better, much as it ashamed her to admit it to herself. Constant nagging to get him to behave more maturely and responsibly had always been her forte, but the full extent of the danger involved in superheroing had been totally beyond her grasp. So much of the time she'd been living from moment to moment no better than him, the only difference being that she stopped to think for five seconds before doing something. A little forethought, sure, but not the extensive planning and research that she _should_ have been doing. Battle plans and fallback plans, enemy weaknesses, alien technology, distinct tactical roles. She could have, should have worried about those things. But no, she hadn't. It had been more fun to just see what each day had to offer, and act like life was normal otherwise. No stress until it was thrust upon you. Really, she'd been just as much a kid as Ben. Taking the high ground in every argument and pointing out obvious things didn't make you mature. It'd taken her such a long time to figure that out. Any given encounter with a mutant or alien or spellcaster could have been the end of her, or Grampa, but especially of Ben, because Ben was the one always charging straight into the thick of things to bash evil skulls. And whenever things got really ugly, she would freak a little and actually admit she cared about him and all that sappy crap, but things always went back to normal afterwards, and she never exercised much forethought in how she could possibly _prevent_ future ugliness. She should have been better.

And then there was Grampa. There was a talk with him she'd been putting off for a long time now, as being unnecessary or just plain too uncomfortable to be worth it. But the very next time she saw him, she swore, she'd get some answers out of him. The thought was soothing enough that she managed to drift off to sleep again after making that decision.

But it was a while before she could follow through on it. Grampa wouldn't be back from his Sri Lanka trip for half a month yet. And in the meantime, Ben's old foes kept crawling out of the woodwork as though they were being funneled straight for the town through a tube. They seemed to be crawling out of the woodwork with an unheard of frequency... or maybe it just felt like that to her, now that she really wanted them to stay away. It was maddening. Feeling as never before that she really had to keep an eye on Ben, back him up and make sure everything went smoothly, she ended up skipping classes and homework just to be absolutely sure she was there whenever trouble started. Not that Ben seemed to _want_ any help, he never did. She knew that nagging at him to be more careful would only make him behave more recklessly, if only to piss her off, and so even though her throat tightened at every little insane maneuver he pulled and somehow got away with, she let him do all of it without any input from her. Instead, she kept a lookout, held back lackeys, settled down flying bits of scenery, tied up loose ends, and generally used what magic she had to nail everything down that could be nailed down without directly interfering in Ben's fights. He noticed all of it, of course, but after her lack of response to his first verbal jab about it, he didn't bring it up. Instead he just kept giving her the patented 'What is WRONG with you?' look. But then, she was giving it to him all the time now too, if only when he wasn't watching, so it was more or less even on that count.

The day Grampa was back, she wanted to rush over straight away. But that would have been stupid. Just returned from a long trip, he'd want to unpack and rest. So she waited out the day, more twitchy and restless than ever, and was very surprised to actually get any sleep. The day after, though, there weren't any more practical or social barriers in the way. She'd waited the appropriate amount of time, she'd acted appropriately while she'd been waiting, and now she could get things resolved, in a mature and adult manner. She was knocking politely at his door at exactly noon, prepared to automatically spout out up to half an hour of ordinary smalltalk before getting to the matter at hand.

The degree of her ability to fake normalcy in conversation turned out to be a non-issue. Grampa was still a bit tired from the trip, and just wanted to relax. So they fixed up a couple of sandwiches (made with blue cheese and a kind of meat Gwen hadn't the courage to ask the origins of), grabbed a couple cans of Pepsi, and hung out companionably on the couch, the tv on but neither of them paying much attention to it. They didn't talk a great deal, just idle comments every few minutes. It should have been a happy time, but inside Gwen was too worked up to really enjoy it. She started counting commercial breaks. At the third one, it was time to have the Talk. No eye contact, lead into it as though it'd just popped into her head. She could do this. How should she start it?

"Grampa, I was just thinking... um..." Gwen's brain froze. It didn't do it often, but now it was totally iced. She couldn't think of what to _say_! It was a good thing the tv was still on.

"Mmmhmm? What is it, Gwen?"

_How could you let a ten year old kid fight monsters and criminals, you son of a bitch? _That was what she wanted to say. What she didn't say. "Ben's gotten really good at all this hero stuff lately. Don't tell him I said that though."

Grampa chuckled, head bobbing in the gentlest of nods. "Yeah, he really has. He's learning to live with the Omnitrix's weaknesses as well as its strengths. I'm hoping he'll drop the whole secret identity thing when he goes off to college; I'd love to brag to his mom and dad about all the good he's done. They'd be so proud."

"And mad, too, maybe."

He looked closely at her, but she avoided his gaze. "Well, no one likes having secrets kept from them, especially ones as big as this, but they'll understand."

_You think they'll understand all the danger you let Ben put himself in, all the danger you helped him get in? You really think that they'd ever let you see him again if they knew the whole deal?_ More words to repress."You don't think they might be pissed off for other reasons, Grampa?"

If his look had been sharp before, it was practically a pair of spears pinning her down now. He pushed the mute button on the remote, and she desperately wished he hadn't. "What's on your mind, Gwendolyn?"

"He wasn't always as good at being a hero as he is now," she said quietly but distinctly, keeping her eyes locked onto the blank tv screen, trying to keep up that casual facade that wasn't fooling anyone anymore. _He was reckless and dumb and had no idea what he was doing, and you KNOW that. _"If you wanna say he's never really been an ordinary kid, then okay, I can buy that, but even an extraordinary kid is still a kid." _You let him fight murderers and would-be murderers like nothing bad could have ever happened._ "Ben fought so many crazy powerful bad guys back then. You could've told him not to, or told him to be more careful, or, or, or you could've done a lot of things, but you just _encouraged_ it and let him do his own thing." As much as she'd held back, she'd still said more than she'd meant to through the tightness in her throat, as if she was scared the words wouldn't come out at all if she didn't get them out really quickly. It was hard to hold back. _You should have protected him and kept him safe! You're his grandfather, it was your JOB to keep him safe, not to turn him into some kind of a hero. He wanted to be a hero, but you're supposed to stop kids when they try to do things that they want that are bad for them! _"The whole time, the only bad guy you ever actually tried to get Ben to run away from was Vilgax. What about all the others, Grampa? Sure, Ben turned out to be a match for Hex, and Charmcaster, and Kevin, Animo, and Ghostfreak, and that weird alien god thing, and the bug guy... but what if he hadn't been? What if he'd timed out when he was trying to deflect a laser as Diamondhead? What if bug guy had gotten a black widow spider to bite him?" _What if he'd DIED?! What THEN, Grampa?!_ "What if he'd gotten really hurt?"

She felt one of his arms wrap around her, his body leaning in, warm and engulfing, and comforting. It didn't feel bad, but it didn't feel good like it usually did, either. It was just there. She wanted him to say something to make it all alright, like he always did. But she didn't know what he could possibly say.

Grampa didn't speak for a moment. When he did, his voice was an odd combination of solemn and tender. "Gwendolyn, every decision we make in life comes with what ifs attached. You're not asking any questions that I haven't asked myself a million times over. Every day when we're on the road, every time I see Ben hit that watch, there's a part of me that fears the worst. The higher up you reach in life, the more it hurts when you fall down. Ben wanted to be a hero, and in my heart, I knew letting him be a hero was the right thing to do. It drives me crazy the risks he takes sometimes, but then I think about all the wonderful things he's done, the lives he's saved. That's worth a little stress and worry on our part, right?"

_He's your grandson, you asshole. You're supposed to say you don't CARE about the world, to HELL with the world, because BEN is your grandson, not the world, and you want your GRANDSON to be SAFE! Even if it's not the right thing to do! Sometimes you're SUPPOSED to be selfish! That's what family's for!_ "Being a good Samaritan should come with medical insurance. I'm not saying I'm not glad he did all the things he did, I just... I don't know."

"He chose the life he chose." Grampa's breath was tickling her ear. "I don't think we could have ever kept him from taking this road even if we'd wanted to. Let's just be there with him, and help each other, and remember that as much as we worry over him, he probably worries over us, too."

They were good words, and Grampa's delivery was flawless, but the emotion they should have conjured up in Gwen just didn't happen. All she felt was a dull, cold depression wrapped around twitchy tense guilt and anger and fear. But she smiled, and acted like he'd fixed things, and did her best to enjoy more time with him before she left. She declined the offer of a ride and walked back, absentmindedly kicking a half-crushed beer can along the sidewalk.

The anger didn't fade. At first she thought she was still mad at Grampa, and maybe she was, a little, but it didn't take too many kicks at the can before she realized she was really angry at herself. She was feeling different than she'd used to, but Grampa hadn't changed. And Ben hadn't changed. The only one who'd changed was _her_. She'd started to worry, not just every once in a while in really crazy situations, but on a regular basis. Over every little fight, over every single knife and bat and lasergun that got pointed in Ben's direction. Any one of them could, theoretically, be the end of Benjamin Tennyson, with a second of bad luck. Ben was getting better and better at what he did, but that didn't stop this sudden influx of fear she was feeling. To actually grasp, in her mind, the potentiality of Ben dying... that was something that had never been in her thoughts before, not even fleetingly. Not till that stupid dream that had come out of nowhere, pouncing from her subconscious like a tiger.

When had it first started happening? When had 'saving the world' started to shuffle back, in her thoughts, being pushed aside by 'keep Ben safe?' It wasn't that she'd never cared about his safety, she'd _always_ cared, but she'd also always just _assumed_...

But no. There wasn't anything to do about it now. Ben had the life he'd chosen, and she was as proud as she was afraid that he'd made the choice he had. So she'd just now come to the full realization of what it all meant, so what. No reason to bug anyone else over it. C'est la vie.

So she forced herself to stop shadowing Ben at each and every fight, forced herself to let her guard down and behave normally and let him have his superheroic fun. Things went back to normal. Only once that year did she lose control and let her fear take over, and it was just a brief moment.

With the kind of irony that would have normally struck Gwen as hilarious, a mugger picked her and Ben to rob. He pointed the gun straight at Ben, and made a threat. Ben got belligerent. Gwen heard the sound of the gun's safety being taken off, and from there it was like the safety had been taken off of _her_, not the _gun_. Maybe Ben could have hit the Omnitrix in time. Maybe he could have gotten the right alien. Maybe the mugger was just bluffing and wouldn't shoot. Maybe there weren't even bullets in the thing. Too many maybes. Cold anger rising in her, Gwen spoke four sharp, guttural words in a language forbidden by the occultists and shamans of seven separate cultures, and simply blew the mugger half a block away into a tree. As she panted, shaking and sweating and bent over from the effort of the spell, Ben gawked.

"What was _that_?! That was awesome! How long've you been able to do that?!"

A direct pulse of raw arcane energy. The restrained version, so it hadn't distintegrated the mugger instantly. Even this version had sliced off about a month of her lifespan to do it without any ingredients or runic preparations. If she used it a second time, it would cost even more. "Just... a little trick... I picked up... a while back... nothing... special..."

"Sweet. Hey, are you okay? Y'look like it took a ton outta you."

She huffed and forced herself to straighten, wiping sweat from her forehead. "M'fine." Her eyes vaguely sought the horizon, searching for the erstwhile mugger, and Ben's eyes followed hers. He ran to check on the crook with a sudden concern she was too tired to feel herself, but she did trail after him, haltingly. Ben bent over the guy, examining him closely.

"Wow, the guy landed with this branch like an inch from his head. Just a little to the left and he'd be more than just knocked out. Lucky for him you've got great aim, huh?"

She smiled awkwardly. "Yeah, lucky him. Next time maybe I won't be so nice."

"Psh, dontcha think you should save the intimidation routine for when ugly's awake to hear it?"

"Yeah, yeah."

Ben never doubted that she'd aimed, but she hadn't. Ben never doubted that she didn't intend on killing the mugger, but the truth was, Gwen honestly didn't care if the mugger was alive or dead. She had other priorities. Killing just because it was easy would never be the kind of thing she would do, but if someone rolled the dice in a gamble against the reaper with Ben as the stakes... well, she wouldn't go out of her way to cheat for them. Ben could be the superhero. She was the magician. And being a magician, she had to take into account that sometimes, the magic that surrounded Ben's charmed life might not be there every single time it was needed.

That night, when she went to sleep, she had a dream.

_"Not today?" her reflection in the pool of blood asked. "Maybe tomorrow. Probably tomorrow." And the reflection giggled._


	23. Chapter 22

22. An Intrusion into Gamer Paradise

According to the map, they were in the right place. Thank God, at last! Grampa carefully fired up his laser in a circle, and kicked up and out, leaving a man-sized hole in the pipe. He leapt out in what was probably a dramatic pose, every bit the Plumber, ready for anything. Gwen staggered out immediately after with much less dignity, gasping at the sweet, sweet fresh air and drinking it in desperately. They'd gone through Hell to get this far, and she would have gone through it a dozen more times for Ben's sake, but still, after you crawled through half a mile of sewer pipe, the sheer relief of normal, breathable air kind of overpowered any other thoughts in your head. The suits and air filters they were wearing only went so far. Tearing the filthy things off probably wasn't the first thing she should be doing, but then, she didn't hear any alarms going off and there didn't _seem_ to be anyone nearby, so she figured she could spare the three seconds.

Lighting was dim, almost but not quite pitch-black. Monitors glowed luminously from all over, showing numbers, graphs, graphics simulations. Wincing, she caught the foreboding stare of an inobtrusive little camera mounted near the ceiling, and got Grampa's attention, pointing to it. Nodding, he blasted it to scrap. Scrap which fell into a corner, and then for some reason the corner went 'Ow!' in a very familiar voice Gwen hadn't heard in too, too long.

Ben Tennyson was finally found, after weeks of frantic searching, hunched over with headphones over his ears, elbow-length black wire-covered gloves on his hands, and eyes glued fanatically to one particular monitor, which seemed to have some kind of game going on. Gwen's initial urge to run over there and hug him was repressed. Did the bad guys have him hooked up to some kind of brainwashing system? But no, no, Ben looked just fine, turning around and looking at them with clear joy. No dilated pupils, no slack expression, everything was working okay upstairs as far as first appearances could judge.

"Holy crap, Grampa, Gwen! You guys finally got here, huh?!" He tossed the headphones to the floor carelessly and ran over to them. Well, _tried_ to run over, anyway. The cords trailing out of the gloves only let him get within a couple feet. "I couldn't go hero this whole time," he grumbled, holding up his gloved hands. "I can't take these things off by myself, and it covers the Omnitrix. Pretty lame. But you should see the stuff these guys have! It's amazing. These are _definitely_ my favorite kidnappers so far."

Maybe it was time to revise first impressions. He sounded at least a _little_ delusional. Or maybe it was just a severe case of, what was it? Stockholm's Syndrome? Frowning, trying to get a grasp on the situation, she was content to let Grampa take the lead. He _was_ the man with the giant lasergun, after all.

"You can tell us all about it later, Ben. Right now you need to help us get you out of here before anyone figures out there's been a break-in. And the sooner we get those gloves off, the better." He picked up a cord and started fiddling with it cautiously, clearly not wanting to just yank things out unless he had no other choice.

"Hn? Naw, you don't have to worry about that," Ben dismissed Grampa's pragmatic worries with a wave of his hand. "They only check things in here, like, twice a day, and it's gonna be a few hours before they're back for the second time. We've got time. C'mon, I have _got_ to show you guys all the things they've been doin' here!" His eyes shone with a boyish enthusiasm that was, all things considered, creepy given what the situation was.

"Ben," Gwen said very carefully, "what is it exactly that you think 'they' are doing that's so great?"

He snorted. "C'mon, jello brains, even you can figure it out if you just take a sec to look. Check out the monitor!"

At his urging, she peered closer at the screen he'd been locked in on till their arrival, eyes narrowing suspiciously as though it were a new enemy to fight. "Looks like some kind of game. Really high-end graphics. Uh, what's that got to do with anything? So they kept you entertained while they were holding you prisoner?"

"No, no, no! You're not getting it! Grampa, stop fooling with the cords, we've still got time and I wanna at least get to the third town on this one before we go." Ben pulled the cords from their bewildered grandfather's grasp protectively.

"Ben! Have you lost what little remains of your brains?" Gwen snapped, her patience at an end. "Let's get _out_ of here!" It wasn't supposed to be like this. After everything they'd gone through to get to him, after all the fear and uncertainty and desperation, things were supposed to be different. They were supposed to have a sentimental reunion with a great big group hug, and he'd say he was sorry for getting kidnapped, and they would blast their way out of the facility with lots of pyrotechnics and going-hero stuff. Everything was all wrong.

"It's a whole new kind of video game!" Ben burst out excitedly, while Gwen and Grampa exchanged uneasy looks. "They hook up stuff so you feel it, all the way down to your spine! It's incredible, it makes you sad when a character dies, and when you hop over lava you actually sweat, and stuff! The first game I beat with this crazy system, I swear to God I actually cried like a chick at the ending. This stuff is amazing, it's better than sex, not that I've ever _had_ sex, but you know what I mean, right?"

"People kidnapped you at random off the street to play a video game?" Grampa asked suspiciously, clearly starting to share Gwen's opinion of his mental state. "That doesn't make a lot of sense."

Ben shrugged. "It's s'posed to have a lot of bugs they need to work out. They say they have to have guinea pigs to test it like this before they do a real public type test, 'cause it could fry neural pathways or something. I dunno, I think they're just really paranoid about it, having too much fun playing secret game programmer society or something. My neurals feel fine."

"So, all this time... while we've been looking for you, wondering where you were... you were right here, having fun playing a video game?" Gwen asked slowly as the fullness of the concept solidified in her mind. She felt the first stirrings of anger, tiny embers that wanted to wake into roaring flames.

He blinked. "Uh. I guess? Sorry if I worried ya or anything. These guys aren't like Animo or Vilgax, they weren't gonna _kill_ me or anything like that. I don't think, anyway."

Gwen leaned against one of the looming pieces of electronic equipment and stared up at the ceiling. She couldn't stand to look at Ben anymore. "You're right, you don't think," she said calmly, but something in her tone was twisted enough to put even someone as oblivious as Ben on his guard.

"Uh... Gwen, what's the matter?"

She waited a second, wondering if Grampa would say anything. But no, no, he wasn't going to bring it all up. If it were up to _Grampa_, Ben wouldn't ever know what they'd gone through for the little brat's sake. The man spoiled him. She wouldn't. "Do you have any idea what we went through to get to this dinky little room?" she asked, feeling the rage inside her teeter between hot and cold, and finally settle on cold, an icy nausea. "You make me sick." It was true, but she was only able to say it because she wasn't looking at him. To look at him, see the expression on his face at the words, would have been too much. But she could say the truth so long as she focused on the dim view of the ceiling panels. "Just enjoying your little ultimate gaming vacation as if the outside world didn't even exist. As if _we_ didn't exist."

"Now, Gwen, I think you're being too harsh-"

"No, Grampa, I'm not going to let you smooth this over," Gwen said before she knew what she was going to say, feeling as though her entire body had tightened into a hard iron core. What was she _doing_, trying to stand up to _Grampa_, of all people? As if he was ever _wrong_ about anything? But no. She had to say this. Ben had to know. It was fine, she could keep on talking, so long as she didn't _look_ at either of them. "You always smooth things over between me and Ben. But this is too big. It would be like turning the Himalayas into a parking lot. And it's not just me, either, it's about you too. Ben, do you know how scared we were when you just vanished like that? Grampa blamed himself, and I blamed myself, and we both tried to convince each other it wasn't the other person's fault, but neither of us really believed each other. Grampa made calls and had meetings all over the place. The police, a ton of different government officials, old Plumber guys, some freaky people who insisted on standing in shadows and had names like Cold Red and Lips Mackenzie. He even visited prison and interrogated most of your little villains' gallery. I ran around putting up posters everywhere, and going door to door asking if anyone had seen someone fitting your description, or the description of all your way too numerous alien forms. I even tried to hack into this government spy satellite. I couldn't get past all the firewalls, but I'm pretty sure I quit before they could trace me. Minor or not, people get jailtime for that kind of stuff." She hadn't told Grampa about that last part. It was a good thing she was deliberately not looking at either of them, still in a casual, 'Wow this ceiling sure is interesting' pose. "It was the first time we'd ever lost you so totally, out of the blue like that, and not a single friggin' _Scooby Doo_ clue to go on. We were scared we'd lost you forever, that maybe you were already dead. I ended up having to use a new spell to figure out roughly where you were. Had to call up this crazy undead genie thing to do it, and after some _real_ sharp negotiating it cost me my ability to see color for a month and a half, so thanks for that. Once we got the general location, the real fun started. I dunno how security is on the inside of this place, but on the outside it's freaking insane. Guards nearly shot me and Grampa at least twice when we tried to get in aboveground. So guess how we got in, Ben? Give up? We pulled a _Shawshank Redemption_ and crawled through half a mile of sewer pipe. And then we got here, and you know the rest." She finally found the courage to look at Ben, and noted with satisfaction his wide, shocked eyes, his totally mindblasted expression.

"Uh... so, that's what that smell is," he said with a weak sad little excuse for a smile. "I, uh, wow. Guys. I'm so sorry. I didn't think you'd-"

"And that's your problem, isn't it?" she said tightly. "You don't _ever_ think. But I guess there's no point in you starting _this_ late in life, huh." It was amazing. Just a few hours earlier, she'd have given anything to see Ben again. But now that she actually had him back, she just wanted to punt him to the other side of the globe.

"Gwen, Grampa, really, I swear I-"

"Save it. Let's just go." She turned for a door, any door, ready to do whatever it took to get out. Any motivation she might have had to go back through the sewer pipe again was completely lost. Behind her, she heard Grampa doing his mediator thing. Telling Ben that Gwen had a point, that he should have taken things more seriously and thought about the situation in a more responsible way, but also saying that his cousin was just acting angry out of wounded affection and that she'd get over it in time. Gwen was fairly sure she wouldn't.


	24. Chapter 23

23. The Game of Life

"Time to get hitched... guess you finally managed to corner someone with a butcher knife an' a proposal!"

Gwen weighed the benefits and drawbacks of reacting to the jab with annoyance, and decided that rolling with it would be more entertaining. "Sure did," she replied with a wicked smirk. "Only it wasn't a knife, I just threatened to lock them in the same room as my brainless cousin for a whole week."

"Ooohhhhh," Ben howled with a grin, grabbing a peg without looking at it and pushing it down in Gwen's tiny red car (a convertible, she liked to think).

Gwen frowned slightly. "You gave me a pink one." She wanted a blue peg next to her pink peg. It was a matter of aesthetics and board gaming tradition.

"Huhn. So?"

Gwen's frown morphed into a scowl proper as she reached for the car, fully intending to set things aright, but Ben, predictably, snatched up the miniature vehicle and twiddled it between two fingers out of easy reach. "Put me back, dork!"

"Whassamatter, _Gwendolyn_, you got something against same-sex couples?"

"Don't be even more of a doofus than you already are. I just want a blue one, okay?"

"I think two pink ones up front looks cute. They match." He set the car back down, and straightened it on the little segmented path with ludicrously careful precision. "We can pretend it's Charmcaster or somethin'."

She glared at him from across the board with unmitigated disgust. "What is _wrong_ with you? I swear, your brain just shrank to match the rest of your shrimpy body."

"Hey!"

"She's an unrepentantly evil backstabbing crook who'd hurt anyone to get what she wants!" Gwen continued, more insulted by the thought of Ben mentally pairing her with one of their longterm nemeses than by the gender of said nemesis.

"Yeah," Ben agreed amiably, "but she's also hot."

Gwen stared in dumb silence.

Ben stared back. "...what? She _is_."

She made a rude and melodramatic gagging noise. "You are never, _ever_ allowed to say that again."

"Oh, come on, like you've never thought one of the bad guys was cute," Ben protested, spinning the little spinner, grunting as it inevitably got stuck, and spinning harder and harder until it finally worked right.

"Unlike _some_ people, _I_ am attracted to intelligence and maturity, not shallow outer appearances," Gwen huffed with exaggerated self-righteousness, crossing her arms.

"Sure, you keep tellin' yourself that," Ben mumbled, strangely subdued all of a sudden. He tapped his car with great significance across each and every segment of the track, and finally landed himself in the chapel with a particularly loud little thump of plastic on cardboard. "Hahah, Kai came back to me to beg forgiveness and proclaim eternal love for my studly self. I knew it."

At that moment, Gwen decided on poetic revenge for the seemingly-forgotten matter of the extra pink peg in her car. Just as Ben was about to put a pink peg next to his little board game self, she shoved in a blue peg with a vicious satisfaction, using almost enough force to bend it permanently.

"HEY! Get that dude outta my lovewagon!"

Gwen burst out laughing. "Lovewagon? Yeah, if you like your love up the-"

Her cousin contorted and curled around himself in a twisted fetal position, rocking back and forth in horror. "AHHHGH! YOU'RE SICK! SICK AND TWISTED!"

"If _I'm_ stuck with Charmcaster, _you_ get Kevin. Sounds fair to me."

Ben's wailing reached such levels of high-pitched screechery that Grampa looked back to make sure they weren't killing each other or something, chuckled to himself, and left them to it. "But Kevin's not even _human_ anymore! He's this freaky gross squished together monster thing! That's totally not fair! And he wouldn't even _fit_ in my car, probably!"

"It's a pickup. He sits in the back," Gwen imagined promptly.

Ben's melodramatic anguish vanished and he sat back up, hands on his hips. "I don't wanna pickup, they're for people who go 'yeehaw!' when they make turns at intersections!"

"I don't think you should worry about what kind of car you want when you can't even reach the pedals from the driver's seat yet," she pointed out coyly, expression innocent as she gave the spinner a deft twist and (to her inner surprise and delight) actually managed to get it to work and spin all the way without getting stuck. Unlike Ben, she preferred to slide her car gently along the track with one finger. Turning was kind of fun that way. "Hm. _Magnolia tree falls on your house, pay 500_. Cruuuddd, I don't even remember that one from last time."

"New version, they put in new stuff prolly. Too bad it didn't fall on your big head." It only took him two tries to get the spinner to work this time.

"Hoping you'd have an intellectual equal to talk to if I got brain damage?" she asked, watching him plonk his car forcefully. To her surprise, he took the same left turn she had without even looking much at the board or counting the spaces with any care. He landed in the space right behind her, which _also_ had something bad in it: the dentistry profession, dum dum dummmm.

"Ewww, I don't wanna be a dentist! Looking in people's mouths all day, yuck. Take back!" He plonked his car in reverse hastily and took the right turn.

"Hey, you can't do that! It's against the rules!"

"So what, it's just a board game. I coulda gone right, I just wasn't paying attention. C'mon, don't be a rules whore."

Oh _ho_. Ben really should have known better than to give her an easy opening like that. "Graaaampaaaaaa, Ben just called me a-" Gwen started to call out meaningfully, not quite loud enough for Grampa to actually hear.

Ben tackled her desperately and covered her mouth, as she'd expected. She hadn't really wanted to get him in trouble. She'd just wanted to see that hilariously panicked expression on his face. "Shut up shut up shut up! I'm sorry I take it back please forgive me!"

Gwen held onto the moment, allowed his panic to sink in and become frenzied terror, and then smirked and nodded. Today, she was feeling magnanimous, and her brainless cousin would be the beneficiary of her carefully-allotted mercy. Besides, she intended to get something out of it anyway. But there was the issue that she couldn't really tell him what she wanted with his scrawny hand clamped so tight over her mouth. Hmm. How to get out of it? She could poke the palm of his hand with her tongue, or bite him. Blech. Choosing the lesser of two gross evils, she sank her front teeth into the meaty bit of skin just below his thumb, and was rewarded with freedom and a pained squeak from Ben. She tried not to think about how long it'd probably been since he'd washed his hands properly, and all the things he could've been doing with that hand lately.

"Of course I forgive you Ben," she said with a smoothly elegant voice. She was proud of it, it was the kind of voice that should have been on an empress. "But you have to put your car back where it was. No take backs."

"But Gweeeeennnnnn," Ben whined, "come onnnn, it's just a gaaaaammmmeeee. It doesn't matter if we cheeeaaaattt."

"Don't care. I'm not comfortable with breaking the rules. And besides, this is a moral lesson! You have no one to blame but yourself because you didn't think about your move before doing it. Maybe this'll teach you to pay attention to the consequences of your actions." Ah, yes, it was a good day to be superior. This was better than actually winning the game.

"Come onnnnn, just this once? Pleeeeeaaaaaase?"

"Either we play by the rules or there's no point in playing," Gwen snapped, a little bugged that he was refusing to surrender and let the issue go.

"Fine," Ben said unexpectedly, flopping over on his side with one elbow to prop himself up. He flicked his car off the board entirely and hit Gwen (she thought unintentionally) in the face with it. "It's a dumb game and you're no fun to play with anyway." He didn't sound _totally_ serious, but he didn't sound like he was totally kidding, either. It was weird.

She snorted, removing the 'Charmcaster' peg from her car and tossing it into the little peg box with a satisfying kertink. "Giving up already? That's totally like you. We only just got started, anyway, so how would _you_ know if I'm fun or not, mister quitter."

"I know 'cause people who wanna follow the rules instead of have fun are boring."

"The rules are there for a reason, so _everyone_ can have fun."

"Then why aren't I having fun, huh? Maybe the rules suck."

"You're not having fun because you're a loser who gives up instead of adjusting the way you play to fit the game."

"Who cares about stuff written on a piece of paper? The _game_ should have to adjust to _me_. 'Cause that's how I roll, wild and outta control."

"Maybe some people think it's better being _in_ control."

"Maybe those people suck."

"Maybe _you_ suck."

"Suck yo' momma," Ben muttered.

Gwen stared. "Okay, that was just weak."

Ben paused. "Yeah, it was," he agreed reluctantly, and avoided having to think up a better insult by picking up some of the pegs and making them 'fight' each other. When it came time to pack everything back in the box, Ben 'forgot' to put in the instruction booklet, but Gwen kept a watchful eye on it and carefully slipped it in with everything else before the lid got put back on.


	25. Chapter 24

24. Boys and Their Toys

"What are you _doing_?" Gwen blurted out as she walked into Ben's room. It was one of those redundant questions you asked even when you knew the answer already. She knew what Ben was doing. She just couldn't _believe_ it.

"Cleaning." He didn't look up at her, completely absorbed in his task of tossing every action figure, play set, motorized vehicle, and figurine he owned into a trash bag.

She took in the rest of his room dubiously, noting the dust collecting in corners, the burnt out lightbulb, the suspicious stains, the small hills of dirty clothes. "Which involves throwing away all your toys instead of dusting, vacuuming, et cetera... _why_, exactly?"

"I'm just tired of all this crap getting in the way, is all." More plastic bits clattered into the bag haphazardly, an ignominous death for so many superheroes, dinosaurs, cowboys, space crusaders, and villainous masterminds. She'd never really shared his attachment to that kind of stuff, of course, being a _girl_, but knowing how much he'd loved the things, and how he was treating them all now, made her almost offended on behalf of the toy collection.

"Ben, that red guy was a limited edition! You told me like ten million times and almost hit me when I tried to touch it."

"So?" At least he glanced at her now.

"And the green thing riding the blue six-legged thing, wasn't he one of your favorites? You were always going on about how cool it was to have a villain on a mount that had six legs."

Gwen almost winced at the particularly loud thud as Ben threw the mount and mounted guy in the bag with particular force. "Why do you care what I do with my stuff? Why're you even here anyway? It's not your house!"

"It's that get together dinner tonight, moron, remember?" She'd wanted to help with the cooking, but two mothers seemed like more than enough cooks around the pot, and she didn't like handling raw chicken anyway.

"Yeah, whatever. Go watch tv or something and stop buggin' me."

Instead, Gwen stood in the doorway and continued to watch him throw priceless childhood treasure after priceless childhood treasure into the trash bag. In particular she took note of the sumo-related action figures. "I _know_ you like that sumo stuff still, Ben. You still play the video games a ton."

"What's your point?"

"You like the games but you hate the merchandise? Dummy, whatever you're trying to convince yourself of by doing this is just a big waste of time. You could be _really_ cleaning your room instead of throwing away all your stuff. And boy, does it need it. Ugh, is that a dead cockroach?!" she squealed, cringing back upon noticing the little still brown oval on the floor next to one of his dust-caked socks.

"Hn? Yeah."

Thoroughly overcome by disgust, she retreated several paces into the hallway. "Okay, I don't care what you do with your worthless junk enough to actually brave the waste zone without a hazmat suit. You should have police tape around your room, seriously. God."

"You don't like it, then go away."

"Fine!"

And she went away. She could have tried to explore the issue further, or thought up some excuse, like how he should keep the toys because they'd be worth something on Ebay someday. But she didn't. She just left, and decided it didn't matter. And for the most part, it didn't... but every once in a while she'd think of all those beloved toys tossed into the garbage along with cat litter and table scraps and all sorts of worthless things, and got a little sad over it. Ben probably did too... she _knew_ he still loved all that stuff he'd thrown away... but that wasn't any of _her_ business.


	26. Chapter 25

25. She Laid Down on a Couch and Said...

"Okay, um. I'm sorry, I guess I'm not really sure how this is supposed to go."

"It's different for each person. Just try to relax and be yourself, and the rest will come."

"Alright. Sooo. Yeah. First off, I want you to know I'm not depressed or suicidal or anything stupid like that. My life is great and I'm happy with it."

"The people close to you seem to be under a different impression, given that they've been pressuring you to see me for... hmmm, two months now, I think?"

"Yeah, well, they're just being stupid. So I've been quieter lately, that doesn't mean I'm _sad_. I've just... had a lot to think about."

"Things you can't talk about with your friends and family?"

"I guess. It's not important."

"It doesn't matter if it's important or not. If you need to talk to someone about it, well, that's what I'm here for. Ninety-nine percent of my job is just listening, you know. If you don't need to talk about it, then... hmmm, I suppose this will be a short session! Which is also fine, if that's what you want."

"So I don't have to spill my guts out to you and tell you every dirty little secret?"

"Dear me, no. Stop thinking of this as an obligation. This conversation is for _your_ benefit. Whatever you feel is best for you, please roll with it."

"Alright... well... it's just kind of..."

"Yes?"

"It's just, if I tell you anything, then I'd have to tell you everything. Like, the whole background information and stuff. And I'm not sure if I should do that. It might... hurt people."

"Miss Tennyson, most of my clients need to be reminded at some point or other that the confidentiality clause in the agreement is legally binding. Rest assured, if you told me you had a dead sasquatch rotting away in the back seat of your car I wouldn't breathe a word of it to a living soul, heheh!"

"Wow. Yeah. Loving that mental image, thanks. I'm super relaxed now."

"Sorry. Just a little morbid therapist humor. I'll try to restrain myself."

"Thanks. So. Yeah, okay. I'll do this. It'll be nice to actually _tell_ someone, anyway. Finally. You know all those monsters, and circus freaks, and aliens who keep popping up all over the place and fighting crime out of the goodness of their hideous slimy hearts? Especially around this town, lately?"

"I'm aware of the phenomenon, yes."

"They're not monsters, or circus freaks, or aliens. They're not even they. They're my cousin, Ben. He's kind of a shapechanging superhero."

"..."

"...aren't you going to say anything?"

"I'm sorry, miss, was I supposed to?"

"Well, you could at least act surprised! You don't even _believe_ me, do you. God, I _knew_ this was a mistake."

"Miss Tennyson, please calm down. It doesn't matter if I believe anything you say or not. Truth is, judging the veracity or lack thereof of your words is entirely besides the point, and not something I'm intent on wasting mental energy on. Please, talk to me. Let me listen. And I will take everything you say at... hmmm, face value."

"Right. Right. Sorry. It's just, I've never told anyone about this before, you know?"

"Of course."

"So yeah, he's a superhero, and I've got magic powers, and our grandfather's an ex-employee for a secret government organization in charge of handling alien mishaps. That's the big stuff. I just have to get that out of the way before we can talk about anything else, okay?"

"You feel that these are things not worth talking about?"

"I didn't say that."

"You implied there were greater things on your mind."

"Not greater, just different, okay? I'm totally at peace with... all the _weird_ stuff. It's, it's the _normal_ _stuff_ that gets me."

"Maybe you could tell me what you think of as weird and what you think of as normal."

"Fighting random criminals, monsters, and aliens without getting thrown in jail for vigilante-ism, destruction of property, et cetera, all that's the 'weird' stuff, but it's not really weird, because I've been doing it with Ben and Grampa since before I hit puberty. I love that stuff. I mean, not like Ben, I don't _live_ for it, but it's fun and satisfying even if it gets scary sometimes. I know other people would think of me as a freak for it, but that's why God gave us secret identities and all that."

"Perhaps people would be less judgemental than you think."

"Maybe, but it's not a risk I'm gonna take right now. And it's Ben's secret too. If one of us comes out of the spandex closet, we both come out. And then there's Grampa... it just gets too complicated, it's easier to pretend. We're all good at pretending."

"You sound a little upset about that."

"Stop reading so much into my tone. There's nothing wrong with it. You've got to do what's best for yourself and the people around you, that's all."

"Certainly, certainly. So, if your hero identities are the weird, the normal would be... hmmm, your civilian identities, if I may jump to conclusions?"

"Yeah. I guess. I saw a Batman cartoon once all about how the real man behind the mask was Batman, and Bruce Wayne was the fake, the made up personality. That's kind of what it all feels like. I do all the things regular people are supposed to do, and say the right things, and do the right things, and _believe_ the right things, and it just feels like a big joke."

"And what are the right things?"

"Come on, I know you have to be analytical but this is pushing it. Would it kill you to not ask a question you already know the answer to? You know. Dating. Part time jobs. College. Voting Democrat. That stuff."

"And these things aren't emotionally fulfilling?"

"They are, they're just not. I don't know. Uh, can I go on a little tangent here for a second?"

"By all means."

"Thanks. So, one time we... Ben and me... were zapped into the future a few years by a future version of me using this time portal spell, right? I know, it sounds stupid, but that's how it always is with the stuff that happens to us. It sounds stupid to _say_, but it _happened_, I swear, and-"

"You seem to have a significant fear of a cynical audience, Miss Tennyson. Try not to worry so much."

"Right. Right. Sorry. Anyway, we jumped about ten, twenty years, somewhere in that timeframe, and Ben had turned into a scary antisocial workaholic, and I'd turned into this super competent wizardess. Lessons were learned, morals were had by all, and there was a happy ending before we got sent back to our time. It was a real eye opener for both of us. Ben... I'm not really worried that he'll turn out like that, for real. I mean, I am a little, but not a lot."

"And why is that?"

"Because Ben learned his lesson. You take things seriously when you have to, but you don't forget how to have fun, either. _Both_ Bens got reminded of that. And it's getting closer and closer to that time frame we were zapped into, and he's nowhere near that serious, or that work-obsessed, and he definitely doesn't spend all his time as XLR8. The, uh, super-fast alien form. He does like to use that one a lot, though. It's convenient for a lot of things. Like pranks."

"Your expression leads me to believe you may have something more to say on the subject. You're quite certain there's no way Ben could... hmmm, relapse, as it were? If we may apply the term to behavior patterns from the future and not the past."

"There's lines he knows better than to cross. And even if he got pushed into a corner, got threatened to the point where he felt he couldn't relax... I wouldn't let it come to that. That's all."

"We can't always control everything we'd like to."

"I can control this, though. It's easy. Our little criminal peanut gallery is pretty predictable. If Vilgax or Hex or whoever escalates crap to the point where Ben feels like he can't be Ben anymore, I'll just kill them."

"Interesting."

"You don't believe me. You don't think I can do it?"

"There you go assuming disbelief again. This is going to sound a little presumptious, but I think you're rather adept at projecting your own cynicism onto people. It must make it hard to express yourself openly, with a habit like that."

"Jesus Christ, are all therapists this annoying, or is it just a gift with you? God... I'm sorry, I must sound like a total psycho. I'm not usually like this."

"The point of this conversation is that you don't have to be what you're usually like, remember. I certainly won't judge you. But we're roaming a bit. You've told me about your cousin's future self, but can you elaborate on what your future self was like?"

"..."

"Miss Tennyson?"

"She was... beautiful. Way more beautiful than I'll ever be, I think. And she had this awesome sorceress outfit, not the skanky kind, it was really elegant and stylish and dignified. And she was _really_ good at magic, not just fumbling through things with luck and duct tape, she was _good_. I mean, she made that whole time portal in the first place, and it didn't even tire her out! I can't even jump back or forward in time five freaking seconds, even when I've got a thousand bucks in reagents stocked and a dozen different circles and arrays drawn. She was smart, too. Really... well-balanced. Ben's future self was a freak, but Gwendolyn was everything I wanted to be and more. And every year I'm supposedly getting closer and closer to _being_ her, but I don't... I don't..."

"You don't feel like her? You don't feel beautiful, or competent, or competent."

"No. I don't."

"What do you feel like, then?"

"Uncertain. I can't ever stop asking myself questions without answers. Every time I learn a new spell, a really good one, I think to myself, maybe _this_ will be the one, the thing that'll help me figure it all out, put all the pieces together and understand it all. But it never is."

"Heheh. Even magic isn't magic, apparently."

"No kidding. Ghostfreak sure proved that. Fucking bastard."

"I'm sorry?"

"I... he's one of our villains, you know? A really twisted guy, with telekinesis and telepathy and other arcane flotsam and jetsam. Real unredeemable evil type."

"A dangerous and intelligent killer, from what I hear. Are you upset that he's still at large?"

"That's not it. I mean, yeah, it _is_, but there's... there's circumstances. Complicated circumstances."

"More complicated than the rest of your life?"

"..."

"You don't have to talk about it if you're not comfortable with it."

"I'm not, but I should, anyway. God knows I can't tell anyone else. He's out, and it's all my fault. Don't ask me to tell you why. I'm not even really sure why I did it. I was confused, and I think he was using some kind of hypnotic suggestion on me, and... I don't know. I just did it. I wasn't a _complete_ idiot, I wrapped so many safety spells and magic restraints on him that I couldn't so much as turn curds into cheese for weeks after. But he got out of it all, somehow, and of _course_ he did, I was a moron for thinking I was better at magic than a _thing_ like him! And now he's killing people and probably plotting some new way to take over the world and throw it into eternal darkness or some lame supervillain cliché like that, and God, I'm so glad we haven't been able to corner him yet and I'm sick of myself for being glad. I don't mind the fighting. I just wonder what he'll say. He's the kind of freak who can really get in your head if he wants to."

"And that's more unpleasant than physical danger?"

"Minds are sacrosanct. You don't violate them. Especially not a mind like mine, or Ben's, or Grampa's."

"Your minds are different?"

"I don't know. I think so, sometimes. I kind of hope so, because it would scare the hell out of me if everyone was like us. We've been through a lot together, alright? More than most people ever go through. Maybe soldiers are about the same, but it's still different. Soldiers have orders. We just have each other. Like a house of cards, only it's just a king, a queen, and a joker, and somehow we're all one of the foundation cards. We've been through a lot together. Things... build up... when you're around people in so many different crazy situations. Lots of little stupid things."

"If they're little and stupid, why are you telling me about them?"

"Every mountain's made up of individual particles of dirt, right? Things that don't matter start to matter when there's enough of them."

"And you don't want the ma-... the misguided criminal to poke at them, for fear of causing a mental avalanche, perhaps."

"Right."

"Do you think your grandfather and cousin feel the same way? Or that perhaps you're the only one with this collection of minor issues?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think they do. Other times it seems dumb. I overthink a lot of stuff. Ben never thinks at _all_, so I have to think for two people, you know."

"That sounds like a lot of responsibility."

"No, I take it back. I don't really mean that. It's just the kind of thing I say about him. It's part of our script. He's smart, in his own way. He can be thoughtful, when he wants to be. I used to think I was so much smarter than him, but that's not it. I just worry more. Not even a lot more. Probably not as much as I should."

"You've developed an exceptionally close relationship with your cousin and your grandfather, but you've talked more about your cousin. What can you tell me about your grandfather, for comparison?"

"It's not that I don't love him just as much. Or trust him just as much. Him and Ben are the two most important people in my life. God, it sounds disgusting to actually say that. To actually admit it aloud. My parents are okay, but they just... they haven't been through the same stuff we three have. And none of the other friendships and relationships I try to cultivate never amount to anything in the long run. It always winds up back to me, Ben, and Grampa, somehow."

"You're straying from the subject again, Miss Tennyson. Tell me about your grandfather."

"Sorry. It's just, there's not much to tell, you know? He's a cipher. Multicultural, jolly, understanding, brave, smart. A regular action hero. Couldn't ask for a better guy to help out two superheroes who barely know what they're doing half the time. But you can't ever dig deep into him, scratch beneath the surface to see what's buried deep down. Everything he does is appropriate. He _never_ overreacts. I love him, and I trust him more than anyone else in the world, but sometimes, it creeps me out how abnormally normal he is."

"Interesting. Perhaps he feels the need to stay in control for your sake during all these dangerous situations?"

"Could be. No real way to know."

"Unless you ask him, of course."

"It doesn't matter, it's not important."

"I can't help but wonder if those close to you would disagree."

"I _said_ it doesn't matter, why can't you just take me at my word for a change of pace? I trust him with my life, with _more_ than my life, with everything I have. Which is more than I can say for _Ben_."

"You don't trust your cousin?"

"I trust him a ton. But only up to a point. It's a point with a really big threshold though."

"But not like your grandfather."

"No. Ben's Ben and Grampa's Grampa. I wouldn't want them to be like each other, that'd just be disturbing. It's a tradeoff kind of thing. I trust Grampa more, but I feel closer to Ben."

"How close?"

"Excuse me?"

"How close do you feel to your cousin?"

"I... he's... he's just Ben, okay? He'll never do the right thing until it really counts, and then he'll do the right thing no matter what. He makes me forget what the difference is between being mad and being happy. We don't have a single thing in common except for umpteen summers of crazy evil villain bullshit raining all around us like a cornucopia of comic book geek wet dreams. I can't help but care about him. I wish I could. It'd make everything so much easier."

"You wish you could stop caring about him? Why is that?"

"Because he's my cousin. You're not supposed to care about your cousins. Say you care, fine, sure, but not really, actually _care_. You're supposed to see them once a year on family reunions and forget about them the rest of the time."

"Supposed to, not supposed to... hmmm, according to whom?"

"I don't know, life! Are _you_ close to any of _your_ cousins?"

"Not particularly. Why do you consider me a measuring stick for your personal relationships?"

"Eck, don't use that word about him, please. It makes it sound so _serious_. We haven't even _talked_ in a month or something like that."

"You sound very conflicted."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"It means that you sound both affectionate towards your cousin, and uncomfortable with expressing that affection. Are you worried that people will think less of you for admitting that you're not emotionally ambivalent towards him?"

"HAH. Hah. Hahahah. Oh, God. What the _hell_. I'm not paying you _nearly_ enough to let you dip this far into psychoanalytical bullshit. Look, stop overanalyzing for a minute, okay? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I'm not worried about what people think! I'm especially not worried about what _you_ think. And to prove it, I'm going to leave with five minutes left on the clock. Thanks for the chat, it was a fun waste of time."

"Please, Miss Tennyson, let's not-"

"Yeah, I know you'd like to make a steady paying customer out of me, but I think I've gotten everything out of this I want. We're done here. Next time I feel the need to vent, I'll just spill my guts to my dad over the phone like a normal person. I may not be able to tell him everything, but he knows how to listen without pissing me off."

"What makes you think he won't end up asking you the same questions? He _has_ already been replaced."

"Wha? What do you mean, replaced?"

"Oh. Oh dear me. I really shouldn't have said that. Got quite carried away in the heat of the moment, you know. Climax of the session and all that. The master will not be happy with me."

"The... the _master_?"

"Perhaps it's better this way, though. Maintaining cover and gently uncovering the psychological weaknesses of your little 'dream team,' as you so charmingly put it, would have taken _so_ much time. A little good old-fashioned torture and some judiciously applied telepathic mind fucking will get us the same results within a more satisfyingly compact timeframe. It was considered too risky, but given that you've admitted yourself that you're not quite as skillful at the magic arts as you'd hoped, I think we can manage."

"Who the _hell_ do you think you are, you arrogant slimeball?! Maybe I'm no freaking Merlin yet but I still eat the average overlord's lackey for breakfast! What did you do to my parents?! And who's your master?!"

"Nothing at all, they're quite safe. Far too useful as leverage to be eaten. Yet, anyway. The master? You know him well enough. He owes you his freedom, and he is... hmmm, grateful. But not _that_ grateful. Please do keep in mind, the less you struggle, the fewer chunks of you I will have to bite off in order to restrain you."

"Goddammit... GODDAMMIT! This is all my fault..."

"Ah, now I'm sensing a real breakthrough, Miss Tennyson. I feel so elated. Reminding people why they hate themselves is what therapy's _for_, after all."


	27. Chapter 26

26. An Awkward Question

"So, how do you guys wanna die?" Ben said after ten minutes of silently staring out the window.

"Uh... what?" Gwen asked carefully, sure she had misheard him. Or maybe this was a lead in to an unusually elaborate joke at her expense.

"Everyone's gotta go sometime, right? Don't you ever think about how you want the last five minutes or whatever to be?"

"You're a bit young to be thinking about that kind of thing," Grampa put in mildly.

"Nuh uh. We stare death in the face like, every day!"

"Maybe _you_ do, Mister I Never Look Before I Jump Off A Cliff."

"Falling's more fun if you don't know what's at the bottom!" His grin was eerie. Gwen wondered if he really realized that, if he went splat, he didn't have an extra nine lives to keep on playing. "But seriously, c'mon, haven't you ever _thought_ about it? I've got how I wanna die all planned out in my head, it'll be epic, a big finale that'll leave the rest of the world in tearful awe at my awesomeness."

"Ben, I'm not sure if it's a good idea for you to be making concrete plans about it," Grampa said, sounding amused. Gwen was a little offended that he wasn't taking this disturbing topic more seriously.

"But it's fun! See, here's how it's gonna happen. Someone I like gets offed, right, and I'm all pissed off and rawr must have revengey, so I charge into this huge army of bad guys even though everyone tells me not to do it. Like, a kajillion of Vilgax's robot drones or something. And I fight and fight until there's mountains of their squished bodies laying all around, and they _would_ run away but they can't because their programming won't let them, see, and it's a super cool battle, better than that one in the _Lord of the Rings_! And I kill all of them except for the very last one who I half-squished and then turned my back on, and that's when the watch times out, and I get zapped in the back by that last half-dead robot. And I go like this... knew I should've made sure that one was dead, heheh, argh... and fall with my face in the ground, and whisper something cool-sounding and meaningful, coughing up a little blood in the middle. And then I die. Totally epic, right?"

Gwen stared at him closely, trying to figure out how serious he was or not. She couldn't tell. At all. She could usually _tell_ when he was kidding and when he was serious. But his beaming expression, sparkling eyes, and Cheshire grin were impenetrable this time. "Okay, whatever," she tried to dismiss the gross subject, "so long as _I'm_ not the one who gets offed. Can we talk about something else now?"

"You don't have enough imagination, Gwen! Grampaaa, come on, you've got my back, right? Haven't you ever thought about how you wanna go?"

"Well... maybe a little," Grampa relented to Gwen's repulsion, amusement warring with solemnity in his voice. "Have you kids ever seen _the Godfather_? Sorry, of course you haven't, you're too young for a violent movie like that. But there's a part where old man Corleone is playing in the cornfield with a little child. It's very happy and peaceful. I like to think it'd be kind of like that."

"So you want to traumatize some little kid," Gwen said slowly, feeling like the only sane person in the van at the moment. "I can't believe you're talking about this, it's so morbid!"

"I wanna see _the Godfather_ now," Ben said. "I heard it has lots of cool killin' scenes anyway."

"I'll rent it for you when you're just a little older."

"Oh, come onnnnnnnnnn. Why can't I see it now? Pleeeeeaaaaase?"

"Well..." Gwen scowled, looking back and forth between the two. Grampa was going to give in, she knew it. "Okay, it _is_ a cinematic classic, after all. But we'll have to fast forward past a few parts." She knew it! This was so wrong on so many levels she didn't know where to start objecting.

"So what about you Gwen?"

"What _about_ me?"

"How do you wanna die?" Ben persisted.

She shifted her eyes to stare out the window, propping her head up in one palm. "I _don't_, you sick freak."

"But you're gonna, everyone does. So think about it, if you _had_ to go, how would it be, if you could choose everything about it?"

_I want to die before both of you_, she almost said, but didn't. "I... don't wanna die in a fight," she said slowly, cautiously, feeling out the concept as she said it. "Because in a fight you don't have time to think about all the things that matter before you go, you just get whacked and there's no time to think about it all before the end. And I don't wanna die... all gross or anything. You know. Drowning bloats you up, and fire melts stuff, and I want to be _pretty_ when I'm gone, so people don't freak out over it more than they have to."

"That's it?" Ben was disbelieving.

"That's it." That _wasn't_ it, but that was all she was going to _tell_ them.

"You're boring!"

"Well, anyway," Grampa said agreeably, soothingly, "it's not something we have to worry about for a long, long time. There's a Sonic's ahead. Who wants extra-long chili-cheese coneys?"

Ben wanted two, of course. Gwen asked for one purely because she was expected to. She had two bites and left it alone afterwards, her appetite completely dead.


End file.
